Low risk of perinatal transmission of human papillomavirus: results from a prospective cohort study

Our purpose was to evaluate the risk of perinatal transmission of human papillomavirus.

Pregnant women were evaluated at <20 weeks' and between 34 and 36 weeks' gestation for genital human papillomavirus by clinical and colposcopic examination and by polymerase chain reaction. Their 151 infants were evaluated at birth, 6 weeks, and 6, 12, 18, 24, and 36 months of age for detection of human papillomavirus deoxyribonucleic acid by polymerase chain reaction on samples from the mouth, external genitalia, and anus. Polymerase chain reaction was performed with human papillomavirus L1 consensus primers and hybridization to human papillomavirus types 6, 11, 16, 18, 31, 33, 35, 39, and 45 and to a generic probe.

During pregnancy 112 (74%) of 151 women had historic, clinical, or deoxyribonucleic acid evidence of genital human papillomavirus infection. At 479 infant visits, human papillomavirus deoxyribonucleic acid was detected from only five (1.5%) of the 335 genital, four (1.2%) of the 324 anal, and none of the 372 oral or nasopharyngeal specimens. A positively reacting specimen was obtained from three (4%) of 80 infants born to women with human papillomavirus deoxyribonucleic acid detected at 34 weeks' gestation and from five (8%) of 63 born to women without human papillomavirus deoxyribonucleic acid (p = 0.47). All positive results in the infants were positive only with the generic probe and were preceded or followed by negatively reacting specimens. No clinical manifestations of human papillomavirus infection were detected in any infant.

The isolated detection of unclassified human papillomavirus types from infants at only single visits may represent low-level genital or nongenital human papillomavirus or may represent contamination. Although perinatal transmission of human papillomavirus is not ruled out by these data, the upper 95% confidence interval for detection of perinatal transmission from women with any evidence of genital human papillomavirus was only 2.8%.