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HealthDay News — Mail-based, at-home self-collection of cervicovaginal samples is valid for detecting high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) among infrequently screened women, according to a study published online November 5 in Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Andrea C. Des Marais, MPH, from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and colleagues recruited low-income, infrequently screened women to participate in an observational study. Participants provided 2 self-collected cervicovaginal samples (1 at home and 1 in the clinic) and a sample collected by a clinician. Samples were tested for high-risk HPV; cervical samples were also tested by liquid-based cytology.
One hundred ninety-three women had conclusive high-risk HPV results for all 3 samples and cytology results. The researchers found that high-risk HPV prevalence among self-home samples (12.4%) did not differ significantly from the prevalence among clinician samples (11.4%; P=.79) or self-clinic samples (15.5%; P=.21). In all sample types, there was an increase in positivity for high-risk samples with increasing grades of cervical abnormality. High-risk HPV was detected by self-home samples in all identified cases of high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions and cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 2 or worse. Most participants reported no difficulty understanding the instructions for self-collection and were willing to use self-collection again (93.6 and 96.3%, respectively).
“We found in this sample, all of the women who had high-grade lesions had HPV-positive home self-collection results,” a coauthor said in a statement. “We didn’t miss any of those high-grade cases by conducting home self-collection.”
Equipment was donated by Hologic and Rovers Medical Devices; several authors disclosed financial ties to these and other biopharmaceutical and medical device companies.
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