Out with the old and in with the new is a commonly followed maxim in medicine given the rapid pace of developments in diagnosis and treatment. Human... More »
Cervarix has won FDA approval for the prevention of cervical pre-cancers and cervical cancer associated with HPV-16 and HPV-18 for use in girls and... More »
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved GlaxoSmithKline’s human papillomavirus bivalent (types 16 and 18) vaccine, recombinant... More »
The Society of Gynecologic Oncologists (SGO) has published the first in a series of four papers on a variety of cervical cancer issues and topics that... More »
The final analysis of the largest efficacy trial of a cervical cancer vaccine was published July 25, 2009, in The Lancet. The study, involving 18,644... More »
Several countries recently added human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination to cervicalcancer screening in the effort to prevent cervicalcancer. They include the Netherlands, where both programs are free. To estimate their combined future impact on cancer prevention, information is needed on the association between participation in vaccination now and in screening in the future and on what groups are at risk for nonparticipation. We studied the association between participation in screening by mothers and in vaccination by their daughters. Girls' vaccination status was matched by house-address with their mothers' screening participation. We estimated the effect on cancer incidence by means of computer simulation. We investigated risk groups for nonparticipation using multivariable multilevel logistic regression and calculated population-attributable fractions. Our results, based on 89% of girls invited for vaccination in 2009 (n = 337,368), show that vaccination status was significantly
Knowledge of differences in human papillomavirus (HPV)-type prevalence between high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (HG-CIN) and invasive cervicalcancer (ICC) is crucial for understanding the natural history of HPV-infected cervical lesions and the potential impact of HPV vaccination on cervicalcancer prevention. More than 6,000 women diagnosed with HG-CIN or ICC from 17 European countries were enrolled in two parallel cross-sectional studies (108288/108290). Centralised histopathology review and standardised HPV-DNA typing were applied to formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded cervical specimens dated 2001-2008. The pooled prevalence of individual HPV types was estimated using meta-analytic methods. A total of 3,103 women were diagnosed with HG-CIN and a total of 3,162 with ICC (median ages: 34 and 49 years, respectively), of which 98.5 and 91.8% were HPV-positive, respectively. The most common HPV types in women with HG-CIN were HPV16/33/31 (59.9/10.5/9.0%) and in ICC were HPV16
Cervicalcancer mortality in Chile is four times higher than in developed countries. We compared the accuracy of human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA testing and conventional Papanicolaou (Pap) testing to detect prevalent precancerous and cancerous lesions in the routine clinical practice of the public health system. Women aged 25 years and older residing in the area covered by three primary care centers of Santiago, Chile, were invited to participate. Eligible women received both HPV DNA (Hybrid Capture 2) and Pap testing. Women positive by either test (Pap: ASCUS+, HC2: RLU/CO 1.0) underwent colposcopy and biopsy, as did a sample of double-negative women with an abnormal cervix at visual inspection or with risk factors for cervical lesions. Crude and verification bias-corrected sensitivities and specificities were estimated. In total, 8,265 women (98.8% of eligible) had complete screening results. Of these, 10.7% were HPV positive, 1.7% were Pap positive and 1.1% were positive by both
Oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is strongly associated with human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, which is distinctively different from most other head and neck cancers. However, a robust quantitative reverse transcription PCR (RT-qPCR) method for comprehensive expression profiling of HPV genes in routinely fixed tissues has not been reported. To address this issue, we have established a new real-time RT-PCR method for the expression profiling of the E6 and E7 oncogenes from 13 high-risk HPV types. This method was validated in cervicalcancer and by comparison with another HPV RNA detection method (in situ hybridization) in oropharyngeal tumors. In addition, the expression profiles of selected HPV-related human genes were also analyzed. HPV E6 and E7 expression profiles were then analyzed in 150 archived oropharyngeal SCC samples and compared with other variables and with patient outcomes. Our study showed that RT-qPCR and RNA in situ hybridization were 100% concordant in
Low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (LSIL) is a common cytologic finding in cervical screening, yet only about 10-20% have significant histologic abnormalities and these are almost always positive for high-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV). This analysis aims to clarify the role of hrHPV DNA testing in the triage of women with LSIL cytology. In the ATHENA screening trial, we examined 1,084 cases of LSIL, of which 925 had an evaluable biopsy, to determine the extent to which hrHPV testing can identify those patients who have precursor lesions in need of immediate clinical referral and those who have changes more likely to regress spontaneously. Overall, 71.2% of LSIL cases were hrHPV positive, but the prevalence was age dependent, with only 56.1% in women 40 years. Among women with LSIL, 11.6% (107/925) had a cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2 or worse (CIN2+) histologic diagnosis and, of these, only nine were hrHPV negative. For CIN3+, 91.7% (44/48) of women with
Primary Care Can't Thrive Without Nurse Practitioners Courtney H. Lyder, ND, May 17, 2013 With a projected shortfall of primary-care physicians, it's time for alternate solutions to patient care. Nurse practitioners are one logical remedy.