Distribution of human papillomavirus prevalence, genotype, and PAP test results in women in the southeast of Turkey

Background. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence, genotype, and distribution of cervical human papillomavirus (HPV) in women living in southeast Turkey. Materials and methods. A total of 13,300 cervical smear materials were scanned and 899 cases found to be HPV-positive were included in the study. Cases were divided into seven groups according to age (under 19 years of age, 20-24, 25-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, and over 60 years old) and six groups according to HPV types (HPV type 16, HPV type 18, HPV type 16-18 association, HPV type 16-high risk (HR) association, HPV Type 18-HR association, and HPV HR [31,33,35,39,45, 51,52,56,58,59,66, and 681). SurePath liquid-based cytology preparations were evaluated, and HPV tests were performed using real-time-polymerase chain reaction. Results. A total of 6.7% of cervical smear samples were positive for HPV DNA. The mean age of these cases was 41 years (range 15-78 years). All HPV types showed the highest rate of positivity in the 30-39 age groups. Regarding the distribution of HPV types, most of the cases were in the HPV HR group (66%). The most common atypia category detected in cytological examination was "Atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance" (ASC-US) (27%). Conclusions. It was determined that the prevalence of HPV in the southeast of Turkey is lower than the world average, the most common HPV type in our region is HPV-HR, and HPV peaks at older ages compared to what has been reported for other regions of the world.