Colposcopic and histopathologic evaluation of women participating in population-based screening for human papillomavirus deoxyribonucleic acid persistence

Objective: Evaluation of colposcopic and histopathological findings in women screened for cervical human papillomavirus deoxyribonucleic acid persistence. Study design: A total of 12527 women, aged 32 to 38 years old, attending the population-based cervical cancer screening program in Sweden were randomized 1:1 to mock testing or human papillomavirus deoxyribonucleic acid testing by general primer 5+/6+ polymerase chain reaction and subsequent typing. Human papillornavirus deoxyribonucleic acid-positive women with a normal Papanicolaou smear (n = 341) and an equal number from the control group were human papillornavirus tested on average 19 months later. One hundred nineteen women with type-specific human papillomavirus persistence and I I I controls were referred to colposcopy, and 84.8% attended. Results: Histopathology from colposcopically directed biopsies confirmed cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2 or 3 in 28 of 160 of the women with human papillornavirus deoxyribonucleic acid persistence and in 2 of 95 among controls. Conclusion: Among women with normal Papanicolaou smear attending population-based screening, the positive predictive value of human papillomavirus deoxyribonucleic acid persistence for detection of biopsy-confirmed cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 2 or 3 was 29%