Primary HPV screening compared with other cervical cancer screening strategies in women with HIV: a...

To compare the model-predicted benefits, harms, and cost-effectiveness of cytology, cotesting, and primary HPV screening in US women with HIV (WWH).

We adapted a previously published Markov decision model to simulate a cohort of US WWH.

United States.

A hypothetical inception cohort of WWH.

We simulated five screening strategies all assumed the same strategy of cytology with HPV triage for ASCUS for women aged 21-29 years. The different strategies noted are for women aged 30 and older as the following: continue cytology with HPV triage, cotesting with repeat cotesting triage, cotesting with HPV16/18 genotyping triage, primary hrHPV testing with cytology triage, and primary hrHPV testing with HPV16/18 genotyping triage.

The outcomes include colposcopies, false-positive results, treatments, cancers, cancer deaths, life-years and costs, and lifetime quality-adjusted life-years.

Compared with no screening, screening was cost-saving, and >96% of cervical cancers and deaths could be prevented. Cytology with HPV triage dominated primary HPV screening and cotesting. At willingness-to-pay thresholds under $250 000, probabilistic sensitivity analyses indicated that primary HPV testing was more cost-effective than cotesting in over 98% of the iterations.

Our study suggests the current cytology-based screening recommendation is cost-effective, but that primary HPV screening could be a cost-effective alternative to cotesting. To improve the cost-effectiveness of HPV-based screening, increased acceptance of the HPV test among targeted women is needed, as are alternative follow-up recommendations to limit the harms of high false-positive testing.