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. 2015 Apr:33:219-21.
doi: 10.1016/j.ijid.2015.02.009. Epub 2015 Feb 17.

High risk human papillomavirus persistence among HIV-infected young women in South Africa

David Adler  1 , Melissa Wallace  2 , Thola Bennie  3 , Beau Abar  4 , Rokhsanna Sadeghi  5 , Tracy Meiring  6 , Anna-Lise Williamson  7 , Linda-Gail Bekker  8
Affiliations

High risk human papillomavirus persistence among HIV-infected young women in South Africa

David Adler et al. Int J Infect Dis. 2015 Apr.

Abstract

Objectives: Persistence of infection with high-risk Human papillomaviruses (HR-HPV) increases the risk of incident and progressive precancerous lesions of the cervix. Rates of HR-HPV persistence have been shown to be increased among HIV-infected adult women, however there is a paucity of literature addressing HPV persistence in the young HIV-infected population. We compared rates of HR-HPV persistence between HIV-infected and HIV-uninfected young women.

Methods: We obtained self-collected vaginal swabs at six-month intervals from 50 HIV-uninfected and 33 HIV-infected young women recruited through a community youth center (age 17-21 years) and compared rates of HR-HPV persistence. HR-HPV testing was conducted using the Roche's Linear Array® HPV Test.

Results: Eighty-three prevalent (upon baseline testing) and incident (upon subsequent testing) individual HR-HPV infections were identified among 43 members of the cohort (23 HIV-uninfected and 20 HIV-infected). At twelve months, 19% of baseline HR-HPV infections continued to be present with a statistically significant difference between HIV-uninfected and HIV-infected participants (4% versus 31%; p=0.01).

Conclusions: HIV-infected young women in our cohort had a seven-fold increased rate of persistence of HR-HPV overall at 12 months, indicating an increased risk for incident and progressive precancerous lesions. Identification of persistent infection with HR-HPV may complement cytological findings in determining the need for colposcopy.

Keywords: HIV; Human papillomavirus; South Africa; persistence.

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