Elsevier

Journal of Clinical Virology

Volume 82, September 2016, Pages 145-151
Journal of Clinical Virology

A comparison of different human papillomavirus tests in PreservCyt versus SurePath in a referral population—PREDICTORS 4

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcv.2016.06.015Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • First comparison of HPV tests in PreservCyt and SurePath, 2 samples from each woman.

  • Nucleic acid HPV tests showed similar performance in PreservCyt and SurePath.

  • Manufacturers’ recommended pre-treatment protocols must be observed.

Abstract

Background

Two transport media, PreservCyt and SurePath, are widely used for cervical cytology screening. There are concerns that they may perform differently for HPV testing.

Objectives

A comparison of the performance of six different HPV tests in SurePath and PreservCyt in a referral population using two samples from each woman. The primary goal was to compare the performance of each test in the two media. Comparisons between assays and viral load comparisons between media were secondary aims.

Study design

Two cervical samples were collected in random order at the same visit in women with abnormal cytology. One sample was placed in 20 ml of PreservCyt and the other in 10 ml of SurePath. Aliquots were taken for 4 DNA based tests: digene HC2 High-Risk HPV DNA Test, Abbott Realtime, BD Onclarity and Genera PapType, an RNA based test—: Hologic Aptima and a protein test: OncoHealth.

Results

630 sample pairs were included in the analyses. For all tests except the protein test sensitivities were in excess of 90% for CIN2+ and 95% for CIN3+ for both media and with no significant differences except for a lower sensitivity for CIN2+ of Aptima in SurePath (93% vs 98%, P = 0.005). Specificity for <CIN2 was significantly better in Surepath for HC2, RealTime and Aptima, and generally lower relative signal strengths were seen with SurePath except for Onclarity, especially when it was the second sample.

Conclusions

We found similar sensitivity for CIN3+ in PreservCyt and SurePath for 5 nucleic acid tests in the two media in a referral population, but signal strength and positivity rates were lower in SurePath except for the Onclarity test. These results need to be replicated in a screening population.

Keywords

Human papillomavirus testing
Cervical screening
PreservCyt
ThinPrep
SurePath

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