Prevalence of cervical high-risk human papillomavirus and cytological abnormalities in elderly Turkish women

Abstract

Objective: Cervical cancer (CC) screening ends at the age of 65 in Turkey, as in many countries. However, about a quarter of CCs occurs in women over the age of 65. Persistent high-risk human papillomavirus(HR-HPV) infection is the most important factor leading to CC. In this study, we aimed to investigate the prevalence of cervical HR-HPV and cytological abnormalities in Turkish women aged 65 and over. Patients and Methods: A total of 467 women between the ages of 66-84 who were referred to the gynecology outpatient clinics for any reason between January 2010 and December 2021 were included in the study. Pap smears (liquid-based) of patients were screened for HPV DNA typing using the COBAS test system and evaluated cytopathologicaly. Results: The mean age of women was 72.4 years. The prevalence of HR – HPV was 5.1% (n = 24), HPV-16 and HPV-18 subtypes constituted 58.4% of all positive cases. The rate of cervical HR-HPV and cytological abnormalities were not statistically different between age groups. Of the women with a positive HR-HPV test in Pap smear, cytological abnormalities were found to be more frequent when compared to HR-HPV negatives (95.8%, n=23 vs 4.3%, n=19, p