Urinary and Vaginal HPV Testing in Cervical Cancer Screening

Overview

Cervical cancer, caused by high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, poses a problem worldwide as it is the fourth most common female cancer. Fifty percent of all invasive cervical cancers occur among the 25% not attending cervical cancer screening. To reach these women, this project will contribute to the development of a novel and accurate urinary and vaginal screening tool, which allows women to collect the screening samples at home. This project tests the hypotheses: 1) urinary HPV testing is non-inferior to HPV testing on clinician-collected cervical samples for detection of high-grade cervical pre-cancer, 2) Vaginal HPV testing is non-inferior to HPV testing on clinician-collected cervical samples for detection of high-grade cervical pre-cancer and 3) DNA methylation testing is suitable as a colposcopy triage test among women with HPV-positive urine and/or vaginal samples to prevent unnecessary colposcopies and overtreatment of women without clinically meaningful HPV infections. If confirmed, urinary and vaginal HPV testing could revolutionize todays screening programs and keep Denmark at the forefront of cervical cancer prevention.

Paired urine, vaginal, and clinician-collected cervical samples will be obtained from approximately 330 women aged 23-64 years referred for colposcopy and cervical biopsies due to abnormal screening result or referred for cervical excision due to treatment of CIN2+. Upon informed consent, the women will collect a first-void urine sample and a vaginal self-sample. Before colposcopy or excision, a clinician will collect a cervical sample. Among women referred for colposcopy, four cervical punch biopsies will be taken. For women referred for excision, a cone biopsy will be taken using a loop electrosurgical excision procedure. Upon arrival in the laboratory, the paired urine, vaginal and cervical samples will be HPV tested using the Cobas 4800 HPV DNA assay. Histological results will served as reference and be grouped as ≤CIN1 (normal tissue, CIN1) versus CIN2+. The performance of the six individual methylation markers and combinations thereof will be evaluated using the histological results as reference. The primary endpoint will be the relative sensitivity and specificity of HPV testing in first-void urine, vaginal self-sample versus clinician-collected cervical samples to detect CIN2+. Non-inferiority of HPV testing between sample types will be evaluated against a margin of 90% for sensitivity and 98% for specificity. The performance of each methylation marker will be illustrated by ROC curves and assessed by the area under the curve.