A few months ago, I had what I thought was a skin tag removed from my perineum and sent to the lab for biopsy. My lab report stated "HPV in situ hybridization is negative for low risk virus, with functional positive and negative controls. HPV ISH for low risk includes viral types 6 and 11. A viral papilloma may be caused by other HPV viral types that are not specific to the female genital tract and therefore may not be caused by sexual contact." The results are confusing to me as there was no information on the viral type provided. My gyn said she interprets this result to mean the wart in my perineum was a common body wart and that it probably would not recur since it was not in its "preferred" location. If that's true I'm confused as to how'd it get there in the first place as there is mention of may not be sexually transmitted. She said I could have gotten it from sitting on a surface to which I replied I don't sit on random surfaces nude. Do you agree with my gyn's interpretation of the results and likelihood of recurrence, and since it says it was negative for low risk does that mean it's high risk? Thank you for any clarification you can provide. 

Welcome to the Forum. Thanks for your questions.  I'll do my best to help.  Someone once said that the favorite plant of pathologists is a hedge :).  This difficult to interpret statement is all to typical of pathologists making hard to interpret statements.  The bottom line here is that the skin tag that was removed was tested and found not to be caused by the types of HPV most associated with genital infections.  There are well over 100 different types of HPV of which substantially less than half typically infect the genital region.  The other, non-genital types are the HPV types that cause typical non-genital skin warts, plantar warts, etc.  How persons acquire other HPV infections types in other locations is not well studied.  I agree with your PCP that if the skin tag you had was a wart it will not recur.  On the other hand, if it is a non-wart skin tag, there may be further skin tags in your future.  Persons with skin tags not uncommonly have more than one as time goes on.---