Cervical human papillomavirus screening among older women
Grainge MJ., Seth R., Guo L., Neal KR., Coupland C., Vryenhoef P., Johnson J., Jenkins D.
Rates of acquisition and clearance of cervical human papillomavirus (HPV) during a 3-year period in women 51 years of age were compared with rates in younger women to provide data on cervical screening for women >50 years of age. Paired, cytologically negative, archived cervical smears taken 3 years apart from 710 women in Nottingham, United Kingdom, were retrieved and tested for HPV infection with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with GP5+/6+ primers. Seventy-one (21.3%) of 333 women 51 years of age who were HPV negative at baseline were positive 3 years later. This percentage was higher than the corresponding acquisition rates among women 21 (15.2%), 31 (14.1%), and 41 (13.3%) years of age, although these differences were not significant. This retrospective study shows that HPV-negative women >50 years of age can acquire HPV and, therefore, require cervical screening.