New England Journal of Medicine Study:
HPV Testing Significantly Reduces Cervical Cancer Deaths
Results from an 8-year trial involving more than 130,000 women showed that in low-resource settings a single round of HPV testing significantly reduced the numbers of advanced cervical cancers and deaths, compared to Pap testing or visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA). The findings were published in the April 2 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/360/14/1385). The study used QIAGEN’s digene HPV test and was conducted in rural India between 2000 and 2007 by researchers from the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
In the study, healthy women aged 30 to 59 from 497 villages were randomly assigned to four groups. The groups were then randomly assigned to undergo a single screening by HPV testing (34,126 women), Pap testing (32,058 women) or VIA (34,074 women) or to receive the standard of care (31,488 women). Women receiving the standard of care (the control group) were not offered screening, but were advised about cervical cancer and its prevention and were given information on how to seek screening at local hospitals. During the trial, there were 34 deaths from cervical cancer in the HPV-testing group, 54 in the Pap-testing group, 56 in the VIA group and 64 in the control group. In addition to cutting the rate of cervical cancer deaths nearly in half, HPV testing was also associated with a significant decline in the rate of advanced cancers. The researchers also found no cancer deaths among HPV-negative women in the HPV-testing group during the 8-year period. By contrast, there was no significant reduction in the rate of death in either the Pap-testing group or the VIA group, as compared with the control group. The trial was supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the Alliance for Cervical Cancer Prevention.
“The implications of the findings of this trial are immediate and global: international experts in cervical-cancer prevention should now adapt HPV testing for widespread implementation,” wrote Dr. Mark Schiffman and Dr. Sholom Wacholder of the National Cancer Institute in an editorial that accompanied the study in the NEJM (http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/360/14/1453).
On the heels of the study’s publication, QIAGEN announced that over the next 5 years, it will donate one million HPV tests as part of its global access program to provide advanced cervical cancer prevention technologies for women in developing countries.
