Detection of human papillomavirus types 45 and 51 by type-specific polymerase chain reaction.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) types 45 and 51 are both considered as high risk types for the development of human cervical cancer. To optimize the detection of these two types in clinical samples, HPV-45 and HPV-51 specific primers were designed to amplify respectively a 141bp and a 266bp fragment from the L1 gene by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The sensitivity and the specificity of these two PCR reactions were determined using varying amounts of HPV DNA containing plasmids and negative and positive controls.