HUMAN-PAPILLOMAVIRUS ANALYSIS AS A PROGNOSTIC MARKER FOLLOWING CONIZATION OF THE CERVIX UTERI

Cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 3 (GIN 3) is treated surgical ly. Follow-up of these patients is important to ensure successful trea tment, The present study was undertaken to determine whether human pap illomavirus (HPV) testing can be used to discriminate patients who wil l have recurrences from those who will not. It is composed of 26 patie nts who presented with recurrences of CIN and 22 patients who remained disease-free after treatment. DNA was extracted from paraffin-embedde d cone biopsies of incident CIN 3, their corresponding follow-up Pap s mears taken 3 months postoperatively, and their secondary cone biopsie s of the recurrent lesions. The extracted DNA were then analyzed by PC R for the presence of HPV, The posttreatment cervical smears in the re current group had a (25/26) 96% HPV prevalence, while HPV DNA was not detectable in any of the 22 patients in the control group. The HPV typ es in both the initial and recurrent lesions correlated very well, Thi s suggest that most recurrences are likely to be due to persisting les ions or subclinical HPV infections that had not been completely remove d. Cytology alone was not sufficiently sensitive to discriminate the p atients at risk for recurrences, It appears that HPV testing can be us eful to monitor the therapeutic result. (C) 1997 Academic Press.