The diagnostics and prevalence of genital human papillomavirus (HPV) infection in Hungary.

Objective: To show the prevalence and determine the type of human papillomavirus (HPV) in healthy women of reproductive age in Hungary.

Study Design: We determined HPV nucleic acid using the Digene Hybrid Capture HPV-DNA assay from endocervical swabs of 1121 volunteer women of reproductive age. With the help of the hybridization antibody capture test we determined 14 HPV types (low risk, intermediate and high risk).

Results: HPV prevalence was 17.5% considering the whole material. At the Szeged center 27.6% of the women screened were HPV positive, whereas at the three centers in Budapest, HPV prevalence did not exceed 15% in either of them. With a cytological examination out of 1100 cases, 117 (10.6%) were found to be HPV infected. The virus infection could be shown out of 1018 non-malignant cytologies in 60 (5.9%) cases and from 82 epithelial lesions 57 (69.5%) were infected. The cytological and molecular HPV diagnoses showed a significant relation to each other (P<0.001). The cytological method showed HPV infections with a low degree of efficiency (sensitivity: 23.8%). On the other hand, the specificity (92.2%) is an acceptable method for the real negativity of the light microscopic HPV infection.

Conclusions: These facts mean regarding the detection of HPV-DNA genoms that HPV positive cytological reports are false negative and in dysplasias are false positive. Since in HPV infected women the development of CIN is a great risk, it is advisable to carry out the HPV determination and typing in the so-called "endangered" groups.