VALIDATION OF VAGINAL SELF-SAMPLING AS AN ALTERNATIVE OPTION IN PCR BASED DETECTION OF HPV IN CERVICAL CANCER SCREENING IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Cervical cancer represents a serious health problem affecting women worldwide especially in developing countries due to low socioeconomic status, inadequate health-care infrastructure, weaknesses in education on this particular issue and lack of effective screening programmes. The primary aim of this study was to assess alternative screening method for the improvement of cervical cancer prevention in conditions of Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H), which could be applicable in other developing countries as well. The study was conducted on 101 subjects who provided their self-sampled vaginal swabs and/or cervical specimens collected by their gynecologists. Universal Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) primer set optimized to detect a wide range of HPV types was used for HPV genotyping from obtained swab samples in multiplex PCR. Amplicons were analyzed in agarose gel and Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer – a platform based on microfluid technology. Inter-rater agreement kappa (MedCalc2) was used to assess concordance between results of cervical and vaginal sample analysis. Out of 39 subjects who provided their vaginal and cervical samples, results of HPV detection mismatched in 10% of the cases. Inter-rater agreement showed good strength of coincidence between the results of cervical and vaginal sample analysis (kappa=0,748, CI=95 %). We presented an alternative PCR method for the detection of HPV based on vaginal self sampling which is affordable, informative, simple and applicable with high coverage level of defined targeted population and potentially significant in the given cultural and socioeconomic context.