Prevalence and type spectrum of human papillomaviruses in healthy skin samples collected in three continents.
In order to investigate whether previous findings of ubiquitous skin papillomavirus infection in Caucasians apply to populations from other parts of the world, skin swab samples from Bangladesh, Japan, Ethiopia and Zambia were analysed in parallel with Swedish samples. The prevalence of HPV DNA in the material from Bangladesh was 68 %, Japan 54 %, Ethiopia 52 %, Zambia 42 % and Sweden 70 %. A grea