A pilot study on the prevalence of high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) genotypes in Israeli Jewish women referred for colposcopic examination

Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Laboratory for Viruses and Molecular Biology, The Bernard Pridan Laboratory for Molecular Biology of Infectious Diseases, The Infectious Disease Unit, and the Department of Pathology, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: grisaro{at}post.tau.ac.il.

	Abstract

Objective: To determine the prevalence of high-risk (HR) human papillomavirus (HPV) genotypes in a group of Israeli Jewish women referred for colposcopy examination.

Patients and Methods: Scrape specimens were prospectively collected from 84 women referred for colposcopic examination. All the women underwent Papanicolaou (PAP) smears and colposcopies and some also underwent cervical or loop electrosurgical excision procedure (LEEP) biopsy. HR HPV was detected in scrape specimens (Amplicor HPV test, Roche Molecular Systems) and individual genotypes were identified in these specimens (HPV GenoArray test kit, Hybribio Ltd., Hong Kong).

Results: Forty-one (49%) specimens were positive by the Amplicor HPV test. Sixty-four samples (41 positive and 23 negative by Amplicor) were also assayed by the HPV GenoArray kit. The overall level of agreement between the two assays was 93.8% (Cohen's kappa=0.98). HR genotypes were found in 37/41 (90%) HPV-positive samples. The prevalence of HR HPV genotypes in the 37 HPV-positive samples was: HPV 16 in 41% of patients, HPV 39 in 22%, HPV 52 in 19% and HPV18 in 14%. Forty-one percent of these patients were infected by a single HR genotype, whereas 59% were infected by HR mixtures.

Conclusions: The presence of a relatively high percentage of HPV types 39 and 52 and the relative high incidence of mixture infections may be one of the reasons for the low conversion from high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions to invasive carcinoma in Israeli women. Larger and more comprehensive studies are warranted to investigate this issue in greater detail.