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Semiquantitative Human Papillomavirus Type 16 Viral Load and the Prospective Risk of Cervical Precancer and Cancer

¹ Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Department of Health and Human Services, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland; ² Kaiser Permanente, Portland, Oregon; ³ Information Management Services, Silver Spring, Maryland; and ⁴ Digene, Gaithersburg, Maryland

Requests for reprints: Attila T. Lorincz, Digene Corporation, 1201 Clopper Road, Gaithersburg, MD 20878. E-mail: attila.lorincz{at}digene.com

We examined whether higher human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV16) viral load predicted risk of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 3 (CIN3) or cancer (together termed CIN3) within a cohort of 20,810 women followed for 10 years with cytologic screening. Semiquantitative viral load for HPV16 was measured on baseline cervicovaginal specimens using a type-specific hybridization probe test with signal amplification. An increased risk of CIN3 associated with higher HPV16 viral load was found only among cytologically negative women in early follow-up, suggesting that these cases were related to the detection of prevalent lesions missed at baseline. Women with higher HPV16 viral load were more likely to undergo ablative treatment during follow-up than those with lower viral load (P_trend = 0.008), possibly diminishing any additional risk for CIN3 attributable to higher HPV16 viral loads.

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