Prevalence of cervical high-risk human papillomavirus and cytological abnormalities in elderly Turkish women

Year 2022, Volume: 35 Issue: 3, 288 - 292, 31.10.2022

Cem Yalcınkaya

https://doi.org/10.5472/marumj.1186851

Abstract

Objective: Cervical cancer (CC) screening ends at the age of 65 in Turkey, as in many countries. However, about a quarter of CCs
occurs in women over the age of 65. Persistent high-risk human papillomavirus(HR-HPV) infection is the most important factor
leading to CC. In this study, we aimed to investigate the prevalence of cervical HR-HPV and cytological abnormalities in Turkish
women aged 65 and over.
Patients and Methods: A total of 467 women between the ages of 66-84 who were referred to the gynecology outpatient clinics for any
reason between January 2010 and December 2021 were included in the study. Pap smears (liquid-based) of patients were screened for
HPV DNA typing using the COBAS test system and evaluated cytopathologicaly.
Results: The mean age of women was 72.4 years. The prevalence of HR – HPV was 5.1% (n = 24), HPV-16 and HPV-18 subtypes
constituted 58.4% of all positive cases. The rate of cervical HR-HPV and cytological abnormalities were not statistically different
between age groups. Of the women with a positive HR-HPV test in Pap smear, cytological abnormalities were found to be more
frequent when compared to HR-HPV negatives (95.8%, n=23 vs 4.3%, n=19, p<0.00001).
Conclusion: We demonstrated a strong correlation between HR-HPV positivity and cytological abnormality in the elderly women
population. Age groups were not significantly different regarding the prevalence of HR-HPV and abnormal cytology. We also revealed
that the prevalence of HR-HPV and cytological abnormalities in the elderly population were not high enough to explain the second
peak of cervical cancer seen in older ages. More studies are needed to explain which testing methods should be used in the elderly
patient population.

Keywords

Cervical high-risk human papillomavirus, Cytological abnormality, Elderly Turkish women

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