Trichomonas vaginalis and cervical cancer. A prospective study in China

The relationship between Trichomonas vaginalis infection and cervical cancer was investigated prospectively in a cohort of 16,797 women aged 25 years or more who were followed from 1974 to 1985 within the framework of a cervical screening program in Jingan, China. Personal interviews were conducted by trained interviewers when the women first entered the screening program. At initial screening, 421 (2.51%) women had a positive cytologic diagnosis of T. vaginalis infection. Ninety-nine incident cases of pathologically confirmed squamous cell carcinoma were identified from the cohort, with a total of 140,018 person-years of observation. T. vaginalis infection was found to contribute to the risk of cervical cancer, as determined by crude estimates and after adjustment for potential confounding effects. In a multiple proportional hazards model, the relative risk for cervical cancer was 3.3 (95% confidence interval: 1.5 to 7.4) among women with T. vaginalis infection. Furthermore, in the multivariate analysis, increased risk of cervical cancer was associated with the following factors: number of extramarital sexual partners of both the subjects and their spouses, cigarette smoking, and irregular menstruation. Having a large number of negative Pap smears was associated with lower risk. This study suggests that there might be an association between T. vaginalis infection and the risk of cervical cancer, but only 4 to 5% of cervical cancer in Chinese women may be attributable to T. vaginalis infection.