Flexible rectosigmoidoscopy was performed which did not report any visible lesions in the rectal mucosa or anal canal, a biopsy of the perianal lesion was taken, which reported cytopathic changes due to HPV (Figure 2) classified as squamous papilloma. The patient was treated with topical podophyllin solution with slight improvement in further controls, but a transient discharge colostomy was required prior to complete surgical resection of the perianal lesion.

The human papilloma virus (HPV) is an infectious agent of worldwide distribution whose importance in health lies fundamentally in that it is the main causative agent of cervical cancer in women and cancer of the anal and oropharyngeal canal in men. In 1994, Zur Hausen and de Villiers described the malignancy of cells infected with HPV after having hypothesized years ago that the latter was responsible for uterine cervical cancer [1].

Secondarily, infection by some serotypes of this virus is also responsible for genital and skin warts, with different degrees of oncogenic potential. According to CDC statistics, in the United States there are 79 million people infected with HPV and the incidence is 14 million cases per year, this same entity has established that the serotypes associated with the majority of cancer cases attributable to HPV infection are related to serotypes 16 and 18, with cervical and anal canal cancer being the most frequent in women and that of the oropharynx and anal canal in men [2,3]. In Colombia, a study was carried out in 2009 with 217 women in 2 large cities in the country that included characterization of the HPV serotypes that were causing abnormalities in biopsies of the cervix. In these women, serotype 16 was determined to be the most highly prevalent followed by 18, which is particularly important because cervical cancer continues to be an important cause of mortality, in middle-income countries like ours