Human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV 16) is the primary etiology of cervical cancer, which is the second most common type of cancer in women worldwide (29). HPV 16 variants, which vary by Յ2% from HPV 16 prototype nucleotide sequences, have been identified as the following six phylogenetic branches: European (E), Asian (As), Asian-American (AA), African-1 (Af-1), African-2 (Af-2), and northern American (NA) variants (18,52). Several researchers had reported correlations between specific HPV 16 variants and persistent viral infection, followed by the development of malignant lesions (3,4,16,37,43,49,50). Non-European variants were found to be associated with an excess risk of cervical cancer (37). These variants had been found to show different geographic distributions, while some sequence variations had oncogenic potentials. In HPV 16 variants, the L83V mutation in E6 in the Swedish and Italian populations and D25E in E6 in the Japanese population were reported to be associated with the