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Updated: Aug 18, 2026
Use of Interferon-γ Enzyme-linked Immunospot Assay to Characterize Novel T-cell Epitopes of Human Papillomavirus
Published on: March 8, 2012
Comparison of type-specific human papillomavirus data from self and clinician directed sampling
Susie Baldwin1, Carlos Santos, Elena Mendez Brown
1The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, 1501 N. Campbell Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85724, USA.
Objective(S):
To compare the type-specific human papillomavirus (HPV) recovery from physician and patient-collected samples.
Methods:
Three hundred thirty-four (334) women attending colposcopy clinics in three countries were enrolled in this cross-sectional study. Cervicovaginal samples were collected by patients and physicians and processed with polymerase chain reaction and reverse line blot genotyping. McNemar's Chi-squared tests and Kappa statistics were utilized to determine statistical associations between physician- versus patient-collected samples.
Results:
Oncogenic HPV infection was identified in 23.2% of patient-collected specimens compared to 34.9% of physician-collected specimens. Physician sampling detected significantly more infections with type 16 and 52 than did self-sampling and significantly more oncogenic HPV infection overall. For non-oncogenic HPV detection, there was no statistical difference between physician- and patient-collected samples.
Conclusion(S):
Patient sampling for HPV using a single vaginal brush does not identify all oncogenic HPV subtypes.
