Comparison of a novel HPV test with the Hybrid Capture II (hcII) and a reference PCR method shows high specificity and positive predictive value for 13 high-risk human papillomavirus infections

Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are small doublestranded DNA viruses that infect the human epithelium and cause hyper-proliferation (Bosch et al., 1995; Clifford et al., 2003). Certain types of HPV (high-risk types) have been found to be closely associated with the development of greater than 90% of cervical cancers (Chacon et al., 2007; Cuschieri ´ ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: ; fax: . E-mail address: (W. Rawlinson). et al., 2004; Del Mistro et al., 2006). The use of combined tests to detect the presence of high-risk HPV DNA together with Pap testing has been shown to greatly improve the ability to detect pre-cancerous states (Wright et al., 2004). There are a variety of diagnostic methods with differing sensitivity and specificity for the detection of high-risk HPV which have been developed to detect HPV in cervical scrapings and biopsy material (Albrecht et al., 2006; Gheit et al., 2006; Oh et al., 2007; Sotlar et al., 2004; van Doorn et al., 2006). The MY primers are the ideal choice for HPV amplification. They were first described in Manos et al. (1989), /$ – see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.