Prevalence of infection by different genotypes of human papillomavirus in women with cervical pathology

Abstract

Objective: To document the prevalence of different human papillomavirus (HPV) genotypes in our population, and the relationships between different genotypes with age and type of cervical pathology.

Material and methods: Prospective, cross-sectional descriptive study. A total of 1007 patients were recruited among those seen at the cervical pathology clinic of Sant Joan de Déu University Hospital in Barcelona (Spain) between January 2003 and March 2011. The statistical analysis was done with SPSS v.19 software. Differences between groups were considered statistically significant at p<0.05.

Results: Most patients (73.2%) had HPV infection, and among these women the genotype was considered high-risk in 86.4%. The most frequent genotype was HPV 16, found in 31% of the patients. Other genotypes identified, in decreasing order of frequency (all <10%), were HPV 51, HPV 53, HPV 31, HPV 66, HPV 58, HPV 33 and HPV 18. Mean age of the patients with HPV infection was 32.3 years, versus 39.8 years in women without HPV infection (p<0.05). The prevalence of HPV infection was significantly higher among women with grades 2 or 3 cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN 2/3) (86%) or carcinoma (87%) than in women with grade 1 cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN 1) (64%), HPV-associated changes (50%) or atypical cells (40%).

Conclusions: In the population we studied, the proportion of women with infection by different genotypes of HPV 16 and HPV 18 was high. This finding confirms the need for further studies to compare the efficacy and protection of current vaccines against intraepithelial lesions and cervical cancer.