Is New Cervical Cancer Test Better Than a Pap Smear?
Intense research into cervical cancer detection and treatment has yielded significant progress in the past decade. One common cause of such cancer is the human papillomavirus (HPV). New developments involving HPV have produced thin-layer Pap smears, HPV testing, and HPV vaccines. Now, researchers in Italy are reporting a new twist in HPV screening and detection. In research published in the journal Lancet Oncology, Guglielmo Ronco, a cancer epidemiologist at the Centre for Cancer Prevention in Turin, reported that a new way to test for cervical cancer is more accurate than a pap smear alone and identified more dangerous lesions. Clinicians can improve the specificity of DNA tests for HPV by testing for the presence of a protein that is over-expressed in cervical cancer cells, the new research shows. The molecular test tends to give more false positives, increasing the number of unneeded referrals for colposcopy, Ronco and colleagues reported online in the journal Lancet Oncology. (Caro
