PREVALENCE OF HUMAN PAPILLOMAVIRUS IN CERVICAL SCRAPES AS ANALYZED BYPCR, IN A POPULATION-BASED SAMPLE OF WOMEN WITH AND WITHOUT CERVICAL DYSPLASIA

HPV is suspected of being a major cause of cancer of the uterine cervi x. To understand the risk of disease in the general population of wome n, it is important to estimate the prevalence of HPV infection in a ra ndom population-based sample of women without disease. In this study, a total of 231 randomly selected women without dysplasia (controls) we re examined, and compared with 103 women with histologically confirmed CIN II-III (patients). The prevalence of HPV DNA in cervical scrapes was determined by general nested PCR, which was expected to detect any relevant HPV type commonly found in cervical samples. The nested posi tive samples were typed with type-specific PCR. In the general nested PCR, 15% of the controls were positive, compared to 91% of the patient s. In the population-based sample, 2.2% had HPV types 6 and 11, and 10 % had types 16, 18, 31, and 33. In both groups, HPV DNA was observed l ess frequently in women above than below the age of 30. The results ar e among the few population-based figures on the prevalence of HPV in w omen, and provide a baseline for understanding the risk of developing cancer of the uterine cervix, and determining the proportion of women to be included in intervention studies.