Evaluation of clinical usefulness of HPV-16 and HPV-18 genotyping for cervical cancer screening.

Objective: High-risk human papillomavirus (HR-HPV) infection is a leading cause of cervical cancer, of which human papillomavirus (HPV)-16 and HPV-18 account for about 70% of cases. Since HPV infection is common, it is important to focus on the HPV genotypes that pose the highest risk for effective cervical cancer screening. In this study, we evaluated the clinical usefulness of HPV-16/HPV-18 genotyping for cervical cancer screening.

Methods: A total of 86,022 women aged 25 years or older was analyzed in this study. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of HPV genotyping and cytology were analyzed. In addition, we subdivided participants into two groups according to cytology results, negative for intraepithelial lesion of malignancy (NILM) and atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASC-US), and analyzed absolute risk (AR) and relative risk (RR) of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) 3 or worse according to HPV genotype.

Results: The AR of CIN 3 or worse was 77.0 times higher in HR-HPV-positive compared to HR-HPV-negative. Compared to 12 other HR-HPV-positive, the AR of CIN 3 or worse was 4.2 times higher in HPV-16 and/or HPV-18 positive. This finding was more evident in women with NILM than in women with ASC-US. The RR of CIN 3 or worse was 7.0 in women with NILM and 4.5 in women with ASC-US.

Conclusion: Regardless of the cytology results, the risk of CIN 3 or worse was higher in HPV-16/HPV-18 than in other HR-HPV. HPV-16/HPV-18 genotyping is recommended to screen women with a high risk of cervical cancer.