Shift in prevalence of HPV types in cervical cytology specimens in the era of HPV vaccination

Abstract

The aim of the present population-based cohort study was to analyze the association between the prevalence of 32 types of human papilloma virus (HPV) in 615 female patients with abnormal cervical cytopathology findings. In total, 32 HPV types were screened by DNA array technology. HPV infection was detected in 470 women (76.42%), 419 of whom (89.15%) were infected with ≥1 high-risk (HR)-HPV type. HPV16, which is recognized as the main HR-HPV type responsible for the development of cervical cancer, was observed in 32.98% of HPV+ participants, followed by HPV42 (18.09%), HPV31 (17.66%), HPV51 (13.83%), HPV56 (10.00%), HPV53 (8.72%) and HPV66 (8.72%). The prevalence of HR-HPV types, which may be suppressed directly (in the case of HPV16 and 18), or possibly via cross-protection (in the case of HPV31) following vaccination, was considerably lower in participants ≤22 years of age (HPV16, 28.57%; HPV18, 2.04%; HPV31, 6.12%), compared with participants 23-29 years of age (HPV16, 45.71%; HPV18, 7.86%; HPV31, 22.86%), who were less likely to be vaccinated. Consequently, the present study hypothesizes that there may be a continuous shift in the prevalence of HPV types as a result of vaccination. Furthermore, the percentage of non-vaccine HR-HPV types was higher than expected, considering that eight HPV types formerly classified as ‘low-risk’ or ‘probably high-risk’ are in fact HR-HPV types. Therefore, it may be important to monitor non-vaccine HPV types in future studies, and an investigation concerning several HR-HPV types as risk factors for the development of cervical cancer is required.