Triage of high-risk HPV-positive women in population-based screening by miRNA expression analysis in cervical scrapes; a feasibility study

Background: Primary testing for high-risk HPV (hrHPV) is increasingly implemented in cervical cancer screening programs. Many hrHPV-positive women, however, harbor clinically irrelevant infections, demanding additional disease markers to prevent over-referral and over-treatment. Most promising biomarkers reflect molecular events relevant to the disease process that can be measured objectively in small amounts of clinical material, such as miRNAs. We previously identified eight miRNAs with altered expression in cervical precancer and cancer due to either methylation-mediated silencing or chromosomal alterations. In this study, we evaluated the clinical value of these eight miRNAs on cervical scrapes to triage hrHPV-positive women in cervical screening. Results: Expression levels of the eight candidate miRNAs in cervical tissue samples (n =