Prevalence of High Risk Oncogenic Human Papillomavirus Types in Cervical Smears of Women Attending Well Woman Clinic in Ile Ife, Nigeria

Abstract

This study is aimed at estimating the prevalence of cervical infection with High risk Human Papillomavirus (HRHPV) in cervical smears of women attending the Well Woman Clinic of the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex, Ile-Ife. This is a community based clinic where women are screened for cervical, breast and other female related diseases. This is a prospective cross-sectional observational study. Information was obtained through personal interviews using structured questionnaire. Cervical samples were collected from 118 consenting women visiting the clinic during the study period. Conventional Pap smear was obtained and smear results were classified using Bethesda classification, 2001. HPV DNA was detected using the hybribio 21 HPV Geno array test kit which uses Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), amplification and flow through hybridization. The data obtained were analyzed using simple and inferential statistics. The mean age of the participants was 42.9 years (SD ± 10.9). A total of nine different HR-HPV types were identified with an HPV prevalence of 21.6% overall and 22.7% among women with cervical lesions. The predominant HR-HPV types were HPV 16, 53, 18 and 52. In all, 41.7% of the infections involved more than one HPV type. Unlike in most populations studied so far, HPV prevalence was high not only among young women, but also in middle and old age. It was also observed that the prevalence of HR-HPV increases with parity. This study shows that HPV 53 is the second most common type after HPV 16 in our environment. High prevalence of HR-HPV in all age group may be a distinctive feature of our population of women where HPV transmission continues into the middle age and cervical cancer incidence is very high.