Sociodemographic and clinical factors and their association with the types of lesion caused by the human papilloma virus

Abstract

HPV infection of the lower genital tract is divided into clinical, subclinical and latent. Subclinical infections are more frequent than clinical infections, in both men and women. The objective of this study was to identify the association between the types of lesions caused by HPV and sociodemographic and clinical variables. Subjects were 977 women diagnosed with HPV lesions: LSIL, HSIL or condyloma. The chi-square test was used to verify the association, and p values smaller than 0.05 were considered significant. There was an association between the types of lesions and the age group (p=0.0074), education level (p=0.0011), marital status (p=0.0011), economic status (p<0.01), use of alcohol (p=0.0048) and smoking (p<0.01), the HIV serodiagnosis (p<0.01) and the number of partners (p=0.0077). It was demonstrated in this study that there is an inversion of the prevalence of these types of lesions due to age, which is justified by the persistence and progressiveness of lesions in older women compared to those of a younger age. It was identified that the fewer the years of education, the greater the grade of the HPV lesion. In terms of income, an association was observed with the type of lesion, in that women without a fixed income were the most affected by all types of infection signs. In opposition to the initial hypothesis of this study, there was a greater incidence of women in a stable relationship for all forms of HPV infection, suggesting an exceeding trust in their affective-sexual partner and the consequent unprotected sex behavior. © 2013 Gaspar J, et al.