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Benign papillomas from a patient with a family history of epidermodysplasia verruciformis were examined for the presence of human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA. Employing stringent hybridization conditions that allow identification of a single type of HPV and radioactively labeled HPV-5 DNA as a probe, we have detected HPV DNA exhibiting sequence homology to HPV-5 in these tumors. Restriction endonuclease analysis of this HPV DNA confirmed its identity as HPV type 5. However, when hybridization was performed under less stringent conditions that allow all of the known types of HPV to react with the radioactively labeled HPV-5 DNA probe, two additional species of HPV DNA unrelated to HPV-5 were identified. As these two HPV types do not hybridize with HPV 1, 2, 3, or 4 under stringent conditions, they appear unique and have, as yet, not been reported to be associated with patients exhibiting epidermodysplasia verruciformis. Thus we have observed three distinct HPV species in benign papillomas from a single patient. These observations have important implications when attempting to correlate the type of HPV present in the various wart disease syndromes that have been described to date and further suggest that extreme care must be taken when analyzing carcinomas, occupying similar anatomic sites and suspected to have arisen from papillomas, for HPV species.

Inflammation was induced on the forearms of volunteers by twenty-four closed patch tests to either the irritant 10% sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) or Toxicodendron extract. Each chemical was tested at eight sites on the ventral forearms of each volunteer in order to assess the variability of response among test sites in individual subjects. Inflammation was assessed about 10 minutes after patch tests were removed. The degree of inflammation elicited by both Toxicodendron and SLS was variable among subjects, but variation among individual test sites was much more marked in subjects tested with SLS (p less than 0.002). The marked variability of responses to irritation that occur in any single subject may explain why irritant patch test responses do not reliably identify the irritation-prone individual.

There are two traditional ways to modify a virus for immunization: (1) kill the virus or (2) use a live, attenuated virus. There are three modern ways to prepare vaccines: (1) extract and purify a part of the virus that is immunogenic, (2) synthesize a polypeptide immunogen piece of the virus, or (3) use recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid or gene splicing to prepare an immunogenic portion of the virus. The last three produce subunit vaccines that can be made to contain no deoxyribonucleic acid. They are not infectious and are likely to be nononcogenic. Using recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid techniques, a vaccine for bovine papillomavirus has been prepared. This is in clinical trials and probably will be licensed for use in cattle in 1988. A vaccine for herpes simplex virus has been prepared using glycoprotein D from the surface of the virus. This immunizes animals but it has not reached clinical trials in humans.