Good agreements between self and clinician-collected specimens for the detection of human papillomavirus in Brazilian patients

Women infected with human papillomavirus (HPV) are at a higher risk of developingcervical lesions. In the current study, self and clinician-collected vaginal andcervical samples from women were processed to detect HPV DNA using polymerase chainreaction (PCR) with PGMY09/11 primers. HPV genotypes were determined usingtype-specific PCR. HPV DNA detection showed good concordance between self andclinician-collected samples (84.6%; kappa = 0.72). HPV infection was found in 30%women and genotyping was more concordant among high-risk HPV (HR-HPV) than low-riskHPV (HR-HPV). HPV16 was the most frequently detected among the HR-HPV types. LR-HPVwas detected at a higher frequency in self-collected; however, HR-HPV types were morefrequently identified in clinician-collected samples than in self-collected samples.HPV infections of multiple types were detected in 20.5% of clinician-collectedsamples and 15.5% of self-collected samples. In this study, we demonstrated that theHPV DNA detection rate in self-collected samples has good agreement with that ofclinician-collected samples. Self-collected sampling, as a primary preventionstrategy in countries with few resources, could be effective for identifying cases ofHR-HPV, being more acceptable. The use of this method would enhance the coverage ofscreening programs for cervical cancer.