Clinical Evaluation of HPV Integration Triage for Detection of Cervical Precancer in HPV-positive Women

The American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology (ASCCP) recommended HPV testing or co-cytology testing as the standard primary approach for cervical cancer (CC) screening, which is highly sensitive for detection of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 3 or worse. However, in clinical CC screening practice, the specificity and positive predictive value of the ASCCP-recommended strategy is relatively low, which leads to excessive colposcopy and common overtreatment, especially in China with a large number of cervical cancer cases. HPV integration in the host genome is a critical step in cervical carcinogenesis and is highly specific for detection of cervical cancer. Whether HPV integration analysis can play a role in the triage of cervical cancer screening has not yet been investigated.