Oral Mucosa and Urethroplasty: It’s Time to Change

EUROPEAN UROLOGY 62 (2012) 1071 – 1075
 
In this issue of European Urology, Kero and colleagues reported on the Finnish Family HPV Study, a longitudinal cohort study looking at the prevalence and incidence of oral human papillomavirus (HPV) infection in healthy men followed for 7 yr [1]. The most relevant findings they reported were a high prevalence of male oral HPV, ranging from15% to 31%, and the confirmation that themost frequent genotype was HPV-16. In their conclusion, they advise the reader that oral mucosa is an important reservoir for the virus. These data raise the following questions, which we will address below: (1) What does oral mucosa HPV infection have to do with urology? (2) Why should European Urology readers be interested in it? (3) What was the European Urology editor thinking when he decided to cover this topic?.