New HPV Test Can Signal Cancer-Causing Strains

FARMINGTON — UConn Health Center in Farmington has introduced a new diagnostic test for human pipilloma virus (HPV), the sexually transmitted disease that can cause cervical cancer in woman.

The test detects particular strains of HPV that indicate a high risk of developing cervical cancer. UConn Health Center was the first hospital in the state to offer the new test.

“We know now that HPV causes cervical cancer,” said Melinda Sanders, MD, associate professor of anatomic pathology. “But we also know that lots of women get HPV and never get cervical cancer. This test helps us examine Pap test results that are neither normal nor clearly abnormal for the presence of the high-risk strains of the HPV virus.

“Now we can determine with a comfortable degree of certainty whether or not women have the virus that is a precursor to cervical cancer,” said Dr Sanders.

Inconclusive results, called atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance or ASCUS, are a category of Pap test results that typically occurs in three to five percent of patients.

“Before this test became available, women with inconclusive results were told to return for another Pap test in three to six months,” said Dr Sanders. “Waiting with the uncertainty is extremely frustrating for both the women and their doctors. This test can provide rapid results and it is performed on the same sample obtained for the initial Pap test. With it, we can tell women whether they should get additional treatment –– generally either a biopsy or colposcopy, internal examination of the vagina and cervix –– or continue with regular screenings.”

The new test was the subject of a clinical trial sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. Women with ASCUS results from a Pap test were treated either with an immediate biopsy, with the HPV test, or with a follow-up Pap test. “The HPV test worked as well as repeating the Pap test, without a return visit and the uncertainty of waiting,” said Dr Sanders.

Current guidelines by the American Society of Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology recommend HPV testing following a Pap test with ASCUS results. The HPV test provided by UConn Health Center is more specific than the more widely used DNA-RNA hybridization test, according to Sanders. “It allows the pathologist to see which cells contain the HPV DNA,” she said.