Prevalence of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Types in Preinvasive and Invasive Cervical Lesions

Although its incidence is progressively decreasing, cervical cancer is an important cause of mortality caused by gynecological cancers. With wide utilization of cytologic screening,programs especially in developed countries, its incidence has decreased; however, it is still a major health problem for the developing countries. Due to the easy intervention to the cervix with early diagnosis and treatment onset chance with cervicovaginal smear examination, prognosis of this disease has been significantly improved. Long pre-invasive period of the cervical cancers highlights the importance of the screening programs. Previous epidemyological studies showed that the human papilloma virus (HPV) is the major risk factor for cervical cancer. In this study, we aimed to determine the prevalence of the HPV types in patients who were diagnosed with suspicious pre-invasive or invasive cervical lesions by the conventional smear examination. 61 patients with suspicious pre-invasive or invasive cervical lesion were enrolled in this study. HPV samples were obtained from patients before colposcopy and then evaluated with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and DNA-typing, after these, low or high-risk HPV types were compared with results of the colposcopic biopsy. Among the HPV types obtained from patients, most common subtype was HPV 16. Further studies with larger populations are required