The management of HPV‐positive women becomes particularly crucial in cervical cancer screening. Here we assessed whether detection of E6 or E7 oncoproteins targeting eight most prevalent HPV types ...could serve as a promising triage option. Women (N = 1,416) aged 50–60 from Shanxi, China underwent screening with HPV testing and liquid‐based cytology (LBC), with any positive results referring to colposcopy and biopsy if necessary. Women with HPV‐positive results received further tests using DNA‐based genotyping, E6 or E7 oncoprotein detection targeting HPV16/18 (for short: E6 (16/18) Test) or HPV16/18/31/33/35/45/52/58 (for short: E6/E7 (8 types) Test), respectively. Among HPV‐positive women, E6/E7 (8 types) oncoproteins had lower positivity (17.37%) compared to DNA‐based genotyping for same eight types (58.30%) and LBC with ASC‐US threshold (50.97%); HPV16 was the genotype showing the highest frequency (8.49%) for oncoprotein detection followed by HPV52 (3.47%), 58 (2.32%), 33 (1.54%), 18 (1.16%), 45 (0.77%), 35 (0.39%) and 31 (0%). For detection of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia Grade 3 or higher (CIN3+), E6/E7 (8 types) Test had similar sensitivity (100.00%) and superior specificity (85.94%) as well as positive predictive value (PPV, 22.22%) compared to both LBC and DNA‐based genotyping (8 types); For detection of CIN2+, E6/E7 (8 types) Test was less sensitive (67.74%) but still more specific (89.47%) and risk predictive with PPV of 46.67%. Notably, E6/E7 (8 types) Test remarkably decreased the number of colposcopies needed to detect one CIN2+ and CIN3+ (2.14 and 4.50). E6/E7 oncoprotein detection showed a good “trade‐off” between sensitivity and specificity with more efficient colposcopy referrals, which is of great importance to maximize the benefits of HPV‐based screening program, especially applicable for the areas with high HPV prevalence and low‐resources.
What's new?
DNA‐based testing for human papillomavirus (HPV) is a sensitive method to detect HPV infection, but leads to considerable over referral and even overtreatment of HPV‐associated lesions. Here the authors expanded on a previously established DNA test specific for the E6 oncoprotein and showed better performance including higher predictive value of E6/E7 oncoprotein detection with inclusion of eight prevalent HPV types. Improved triage of HPV‐infected women is important especially in resource‐limited areas, helping to make HPV‐based screening programs economically feasible.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
High‐risk (HR) human papillomavirus (HPV) prevalence has been shown to correlate well with cervical cancer incidence rates. Our study aimed to estimate the prevalence of HR‐HPV and cervical ...intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) in China and indirectly informs on the cervical cancer burden in the country. A total of 30,207 women from 17 population‐based studies throughout China were included. All women received HPV DNA testing (HC2, Qiagen, Gaithersburg, MD), visual inspection with acetic acid and liquid‐based cytology. Women positive for any test received colposcopy‐directed or four‐quadrant biopsies. A total of 29,579 women had HR‐HPV testing results, of whom 28,761 had biopsy confirmed (9,019, 31.4%) or assumed (19,742, 68.6%) final diagnosis. Overall crude HR‐HPV prevalence was 17.7%. HR‐HPV prevalence was similar in rural and urban areas but showed dips in different age groups: at age 25–29 (11.3%) in rural and at age 35–39 (11.3%) in urban women. In rural and urban women, age‐standardized CIN2 prevalence was 1.5% 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.4–1.6% and 0.7% (95% CI: 0.7–0.8%) and CIN3+ prevalence was 1.2% (95% CI: 1.2–1.3%) and 0.6% (95% CI: 0.5–0.7%), respectively. Prevalence of CIN3+ as a percentage of either all women or HR‐HPV‐positive women steadily increased with age, peaking in 45‐ to 49‐year‐old women. High prevalence of HR‐HPV and CIN3+ was detected in both rural and urban China. The steady rise of CIN3+ up to the age group of 45–49 is attributable to lack of lesion removal through screening. Our findings document the inadequacy of current screening in China while indirectly raising the possibility that the cervical cancer burden in China is underreported.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Thermal ablation is a point‐of‐care ablative treatment technique for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN). However, limited information is available about its efficacy in low‐ and middle‐income ...countries. We evaluated the efficacy of thermal ablation in treatment of CIN detected through high‐risk human papillomavirus (HPV) screening in China. Women positive on high‐risk HPV and having colposcopically suspected lesions eligible for ablation underwent colposcopy, biopsy and thermal ablation in one visit. Women ineligible were recalled for large loop excision of transformation zone (LLETZ) when histopathology results were high‐grade CIN. Posttreatment follow‐up at 6 months or more was with HPV test and cytology followed by colposcopy and biopsy for HPV and/or cytology‐positive women. Cure was defined as either negative cytology and HPV test or absence of histopathology proved CIN in any positive women. Of total 218 HPV‐positive women treated with thermal ablation (n = 170) or LLETZ (n = 48), 196 reported for follow‐up evaluation. For women with histologically confirmed CIN at baseline (thermal ablation‐104; LLETZ‐38), cure rates were 84.6% for thermal ablation and 86.8% for LLETZ. Cure rates after thermal ablation were 90.3% for CIN grade one (CIN1) and 76.2% for CIN grade two or worse (CIN2+). HPV clearance rate was 80.4% in women undergoing thermal ablation, which was lower for HPV16/18 compared to other oncogenic types (67.6% vs 85.7%). HPV test had a negative predictive value (NPV) of 98.7% to detect CIN2+ at follow‐up and the positive predictive value (PPV) was 40.4%. Thermal ablation is effective to treat CIN as well as to clear the high‐risk HPV infection. HPV test has high PPV and NPV in following up patients posttreatment.
What's new?
When premalignant cervical lesions are detected following HPV screening, thermal ablation (TA) may be an ideal point‐of‐care treatment option for lower‐income regions. But is it effective enough to warrant widespread use in these areas? In this prospective Chinese study, the authors found that the answer is yes, with the added benefit that TA may also clear high‐risk HPV infection. These results support the use of thermal ablation following colposcopy during a single clinic visit, in order to improve access to treatment of premalignant cervical lesions in regions with fewer resources.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
To analyze the clinical performance of p16/Ki-67 dual-stained cytology identifying high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN2+) in Chinese women.
1079 women attending ongoing cervical cancer ...screening and 211 "enriched" women aged ≥30yrs with biopsy-confirmed CIN2+ from five Chinese hospitals were enrolled during year 2014-2015. Cervical specimens were collected for high-risk human papillomavirus (HR-HPV) DNA analysis, Liquid-based cytology (LBC) and p16/Ki-67 dual staining. Colposcopy and biopsy were performed on women with any abnormal result.
p16/Ki-67 positivity increased with histologic severity. It was 18.4%(183/996) in normal histology, 54.0%(34/63) in CIN1, 81.0%(34/42) in CIN2, 93.3%(111/119) in CIN3, 71.4% (5/7) in adenocarcinoma and 95.2%(60/63) in squamous cell carcinoma. Compared with the HR-HPV negatives, p16/Ki-67 expression was significantly higher in the HPV16/18 positive (OR: 35.45(95%CI: 23.35-53.84)) and other 12 HR-HPV types positive group (OR: 8.01(95%CI: 5.81-11.05). The sensitivity and specificity of p16/Ki-67 to detect CIN2+ in the entire population were 90.9% and 79.5%, respectively. In women with ASC-US and LSIL, sensitivity and specificity for detection of CIN2+ were 87.5% and 66.4%, respectively, with a referral rate of 43.8%. In women who tested positive for HR-HPV, sensitivity and specificity of dual-staining for detection of CIN2+ were 92.7% and 52.7%, respectively, and the referral rate was 68.7%.
p16/Ki-67 dual-stained cytology provided a high sensitivity and moderate specificity to detect underlying cervical precancer and cancers in various settings, and might be considered as an efficient screening tool in China.
BACKGROUND
Cervical cytology screening is usually laborious with a heavy workload and poor diagnostic consistency. The authors have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) microscope that can ...provide onsite diagnostic assistance for cervical cytology screening in real time.
METHODS
A total of 2167 cervical cytology slides were selected from a cohort of 10,601 cases from Shenzhen Maternity and Child Healthcare Hospital, and the training data set consisted of 42,073 abnormal cervical epithelial cells. The recognition results of an AI technique were presented in a microscope eyepiece by an augmented reality technique. Potentially abnormal cells were highlighted with binary classification results in a 10× field of view (FOV) and with multiclassification results according to the Bethesda system in 20× and 40× FOVs. In addition, 486 slides were selected for the reader study to evaluate the performance of the AI microscope.
RESULTS
In the reader study, which compared manual reading with AI assistance, the sensitivities for the detection of low‐grade squamous intraepithelial lesions and high‐grade squamous intraepithelial lesions were significantly improved from 0.837 to 0.923 (P < .001) and from 0.830 to 0.917 (P < .01), respectively; the κ score for atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASCUS) was improved from 0.581 to 0.637; the averaged pairwise κ of consistency for multiclassification was improved from 0.649 to 0.706; the averaged pairwise κ of consistency for binary classification was improved from 0.720 to 0.798; and the averaged pairwise κ of ASCUS was improved from 0.557 to 0.639.
CONCLUSIONS
The results of this study show that an AI microscope can provide real‐time assistance for cervical cytology screening and improve the efficiency and accuracy of cervical cytology diagnosis.
In this study, an artificial intelligence microscope has been developed that can provide real‐time assistance for cervical cytology screening. This artificial intelligence microscope can improve the efficiency and accuracy of cervical cytology diagnosis.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
This phase II/III, double‐blind, randomized trial assessed the efficacy, immunogenicity and safety of the human papillomavirus (HPV)‐16/18 AS04‐adjuvanted vaccine in young Chinese women ...(ClinicalTrials.gov registration NCT00779766). Women aged 18–25 years from Jiangsu province were randomized (1:1) to receive HPV vaccine (n = 3,026) or Al(OH)3 control (n = 3,025) at months 0, 1 and 6. The primary objective was vaccine efficacy (VE) against HPV‐16/18 associated 6‐month persistent infection (PI) and/or cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) 1+. Secondary objectives were VE against virological and clinical endpoints associated with HPV‐16/18 and with high‐risk HPV types, immunogenicity and safety. Mean follow‐up for the according‐to‐protocol cohort for efficacy (ATP‐E) was ∼15 months after the third dose. In the ATP‐E (vaccine = 2,889; control = 2,894), for initially HPV DNA negative and seronegative subjects, HPV‐16/18 related VE (95% CI) was 94.2% (62.7, 99.9) against 6‐month PI and/or CIN1+ and 93.8% (60.2, 99.9) against cytological abnormalities. VE against HPV‐16/18 associated CIN1+ and CIN2+ was 100% (−50.4, 100) and 100% (−140.2, 100), respectively (no cases in the vaccine group and 4 CIN1+ and 3 CIN2+ cases in the control group). At Month 7, at least 99.7% of initially seronegative vaccine recipients had seroconverted for HPV‐16/18; geometric mean antibody titres (95% CI) were 6,996 (6,212 to 7,880) EU/mL for anti‐HPV‐16 and 3,309 (2,942 to 3,723) EU/mL for anti‐HPV‐18. Safety outcomes between groups were generally similar. The HPV‐16/18 AS04‐adjuvanted vaccine is effective, immunogenic and has a clinically acceptable safety profile in young Chinese women. Prophylactic HPV vaccination has the potential to substantially reduce the burden of cervical cancer in China.
What's New?
With an estimated 75,000 new cases and 34,000 women dying from the disease annually, cervical cancer is a major public‐health concern in China. This is the first large scale randomised clinical trial of a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine in China. The vaccine was found to be effective, immunogenic, and to have a clinically acceptable safety profile in young Chinese women. Prophylactic HPV vaccination thus has the potential to substantially reduce the burden of cervical cancers and precancers in China.
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Abstract
Background
How vaginal infections such as bacterial vaginosis, Candida spp, and Trichomonas vaginalis affect persistence of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is not well established. Our ...study aimed to evaluate the association between common vaginal infections and cervical non-HPV16/18 infection, as risk factors associated with persistence of nonvaccine HPV types will become increasingly relevant in the setting of HPV vaccination.
Methods
We performed an analysis in 2039 AS04-HPV16/18–vaccinated women enrolled in a phase II/III trial in China, who were HPV DNA negative at month 0 and 6 and had at least 1 subsequent follow-up visit. Vaginal infections were detected in liquid-based cytology according to the diagnostic criteria of the Bethesda System. Associations between vaginal infections and incident and 6-month persistent non-HPV16/18 infections in the cervix were evaluated using generalized estimating equations, adjusting for the age at initial vaccination, as well as HPV types in the persistence analysis.
Results
Study visits with any vaginal infection had a statistically significant increased risk of incident non-HPV16/18 infection compared to those without vaginal infections (odds ratio OR, 1.44 95% confidence interval {CI}, 1.09–1.92). However, vaginal infections were not associated with 6-month persistent non-HPV16/18 infection (OR, 1.02 95% CI, .62–1.69).
Conclusions
Our study suggests that common vaginal infections are not associated with persistence of non-HPV16/18 infection among HPV16/18-vaccinated women.
This prospective study suggests that common vaginal infections like bacterial vaginosis, Candida spp, and Trichomonas vaginalis are not associated with persistence of non-HPV16/18 infection among HPV16/18-vaccinated women, despite those with vaginal infections being more likely to have concurrent non-HPV16/18 infections.
ObjectivesWe compared clinical performance of three strategies of primary human papillomavirus (HPV) testing, primary cytology and co-testing for cervical cancer screening.DesignA population-based ...prospective cohort study of clinical performance of screening strategy.SettingPatients recruited from community in Changzhi County, Shanxi Province, China.Patient3209 women aged 30–64 years without gynaecological issues.Primary and secondary outcome measuresThe performance of different screening strategies for detecting cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2 or more severe (CIN2+).ResultsA total of 53 CIN2+ and 31 CIN3+ cases are detected. For CIN2+, sensitivity of primary HPV (95.9%) and co-testing (98.0%) are not statistically different, but significantly higher than primary cytology (48.0%). Specificity (86.8%), colposcopy referral rate (7.8%) and number of colposcopies required to detect one case (9.8) for primary HPV are better than co-testing (79.8%, 11.9%, 14.3%, respectively). For CIN3+, primary HPV, co-testing have 100% of sensitivity and specificity, which is significantly higher than primary cytology (56.7% and 90.2%). Number of colposcopies required to detect one case for primary HPV (15.9) is better than co-testing (23.8).ConclusionsCompared with co-testing, HPV primary screening had comparable sensitivity and higher specificity for CIN2+ detection, and both of them showed better performance than cytology primary screening in cervical cancer screening.
With the development of communication technology and network technology, as well as the rising popularity of digital electronic products, an image has become an important carrier of access to outside ...information. However, images are vulnerable to noise interference during collection, transmission and storage, thereby decreasing image quality. Therefore, image noise reduction processing is necessary to obtain higher-quality images. For the characteristics of its multi-analysis, relativity removal, low entropy, and flexible bases, the wavelet transform has become a powerful tool in the field of image de-noising. The wavelet transform in application mathematics has a rapid development. De-noising methods based on wavelet transform is proposed and achieved with good results, but shortcomings still remain. Traditional threshold functions have some deficiencies in image de-noising. A hard threshold function is discontinuous, whereas a soft threshold function causes constant deviation. To address these shortcomings, a method for removing image noise is proposed in this paper. First, the method decomposes the noise image to determine the wavelet coefficients. Second, the wavelet coefficient is applied on the high-frequency part of the threshold processing by using the improved threshold function. Finally, the de-noised images are obtained to rebuild the images in accordance with the estimation in the wavelet-based conditions. Experiment results show that this method, discussed in this paper, is better than traditional hard threshold de-noising and soft threshold de-noising methods, in terms of objective effects and subjective visual effects.
This Escherichia coli-produced bivalent HPV 16 and 18 vaccine was well tolerated and effective against HPV 16 and 18 associated high-grade genital lesions and persistent infection in interim analysis ...of this phase 3 trial. We now report data on long-term efficacy and safety after 66 months of follow-up.
This phase 3, double-blind, randomised, controlled trial was done in five study sites in China. Eligible participants were women aged 18–45 years, with intact cervix and 1–4 lifetime sexual partners. Women who were pregnant or breastfeeding, had chronic disease or immunodeficiency, or had HPV vaccination history were excluded. Women were stratified by age (18–26 and 27–45 years) and randomly (1:1) allocated by software (block randomisation with 12 codes to a block) to receive three doses of the E coli-produced HPV 16 and 18 vaccine or hepatitis E vaccine (control) and followed-up for 66 months. The primary outcomes were high-grade genital lesions and persistent infection (longer than 6 months) associated with HPV 16 or 18 in the per-protocol susceptible population. This trial was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT01735006.
Between Nov 22, 2012, and April 1, 2013, 8827 women were assessed for eligibility. 1455 women were excluded, and 7372 women were enrolled and randomly assigned to receive the HPV vaccine (n=3689) or control (n=3683). Vaccine efficacy was 100·0% (95% CI 67·2–100·0) against high-grade genital lesions (0 0% of 3310 participants in the vaccine group and 13 0·4% of 3302 participants in the control group) and 97·3% (89·9–99·7) against persistent infection (2 0·1% of 3262 participants in the vaccine group and 73 2·2% of 3271 participants in the control group) in the per-protocol population. Serious adverse events occurred at a similar rate between vaccine (267 7·2% of 3691 participants) and control groups (290 7·9% of 3681); none were considered related to vaccination.
The E coli-produced HPV 16 and 18 vaccine was well tolerated and highly efficacious against HPV 16 and 18 associated high-grade genital lesions and persistent infection and would supplement the global HPV vaccine availability and accessibility for cervical cancer prevention.
National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key R&D Program of China, Fujian Provincial Project, Fundamental Funds for the Central Universities, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences, and Xiamen Innovax.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP