Kaiser Permanente Data Provides Strong Evidence for Continued Value of Combined Pap and H...( Evaluation of 800000 Pap and HPV cote...),Health

Evaluation of 800,000 Pap and HPV cotests concludes that "concerns about excessive HPV test positives...are not borne out"

VENLO, The Netherlands, March 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Physicians from Kaiser Permanente and the National Cancer Institute report in the March issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology that results from an evaluation of more than 800,000 Pap and HPV tests conducted at Northern California Kaiser Permanente dispel the notion that excessive numbers of women would require increased surveillance and follow-up when HPV testing is implemented. Cervical cancer is a preventable cancer with a primary known cause -- the human papillomavirus (HPV). QIAGEN developed and markets the digene(R) HPV Test, a cervical cancer screening test that detects the high-risk types of HPV that cause cervical cancer and identify women most at risk for developing the disease.

In the study "Five-Year Experience of Human Papillomavirus DNA and Papanicolaou Test Cotesting," Dr. Philip E. Castle of the National Cancer Institute, together with Dr. Walter Kinney of Kaiser Permanente and a team of other contributors, focused on the early results of combining HPV and Pap testing for routine cervical cancer screening. Kaiser exclusively used QIAGEN's Hybrid Capture(R) 2 High-Risk HPV DNA Test for its HPV detection in the study (also called the digene HPV Test) and conventional cytology for its Pap testing.

The physicians reported that 90.8 percent of the 580,000 women aged 30 and older had "double-negative" results, meaning their Paps were normal and they did not have high-risk types of HPV so were at low risk for developing cervical cancer. Overall, 6.27 percent of cotests were carcinogenic HPV positive, and 2.28 percent showed carcinogenic HPV infection together with Pap results showing pre-cancerous cell changes or inconclusive results. Only 3.99 percent were found HPV-positive with a normal Pap result. Under Kaise
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