Can HPV tests be used on other than ACSUS samples?
One problem with HPV DNA tests is that 20-30% of the women in a normal population will be positive. To avoid this very big problem some of the vendors recommend testing only on women older than 30 years of age or ASCUS samples. The prevalence of HPV in women above 30 years of age is much lower than in women below 30 years of age. The consequence is that only 10-15% of the selected population will be positive with an HPV DNA test instead of 20-30%. However, this has nothing to do with the properties of the HPV DNA test, the underlying biology or any other clinical factor. This is just a consequence of population selection since younger women have a different sexual behaviour than older women. , More importantly women below 30 years of age also get cervical cancer today. Up to 3.5 times higher specificity than HPV-DNA tests has been discovered for PreTect HPV-Proofer detecting E6/E7 oncogene expression in women below 30 years of age. Another way to introduce HPV tests has been to limit t
