Detection of human serum antibodies that neutralize infectious human papillomavirus type 11 virions

A selection of human sera were tested for the presence of antibodies that neutralized infectious human papil-lomavirus (HPV) type 11. Neutralizing antibodies were detected by prevention of HPV-I 1-induced condylo-matous transformation f human foreskin chips trans-planted subrenally into athymic mice. Test sera were obtained from 21 female patients with genital condylo-mas and eight patients with laryngeal papillomas. Control patients consisted of 57 adult random blood donors and five asymptomatic hildren. ELISAs demonstrated that all sera from patients with genital papillomas were strongly reactive to disrupted papillo-mavirus (PV) antigens of HPV-11, bovine PV type 1 and cottontail rabbit PV, but only two were weakly reactive to intact HPV-11. None of the eight sera fro