註釋 The human papillomaviruses (HPV) are small DNA viruses that belong to the family Papovaviridae. Infection with certain genotypes of HPVs are intimately linked with squamous epithelial cell benign and malignant lesions of the lowergenital tract in both men and women. The role of HPV infection in etiology of oral squamous cell carcinoma still remains inconclusive, since theprevalence rates of HPV infection obtained in different studies varied from0% to 76.4%. In our study we investigated the possible role of HPV infection in the etiology of oral squamous cell carcinomas obtained from Slovenian patients. Using three different polymerase chain reaction (PCR) protocols and in situ hybridization (ISH) the presence of HPV DNA was comparatively investigated in 41 archival tissue specimens of oral squamous cell carcinoma obtained from the same number of patients (representative population of Slovenian oral squamous cell carcinoma patients) and in 41 histologically normal oral mucosa specimens obtained from the same number of subjects, who matched the case subjects in age, sex, localization of obtained tissue specimens, drinking and smoking habits. According to the available literature data, our investigation is the second study in which HPV-DNA prevalence was comparatively studied in oral squamous cell carcinoma patients and matching control subjects and the first study where the presence of HPV-DNA was comparatively studied on tissue samples in both groups. Using all three PCR protocols HPV-DNA was detected in 3 out of 41 (7,3%) oral squamous cell carcinoma specimens. Tissue specimens contained HPV-16, HPV-33 and HPV-58. Using ISH only one HPV-DNA positive specimen was identified. To the best of our knowledge, our HPV-33 and HPV-58 positive oral squamous cell carcinomas represent the first oral carcinomas in which these two HPV genotypes were detected. (Abstract truncated at 2000 characters). 