An oligonucleotide mixture for improved detection of human papillomavirus genotypes

Cervical cancer (cancer of the uterine cervix) is the second most common cancer among women worldwide with about 470,000 newly diagnosed cases and almost 250,000 deaths every year. The predominant cause for cervical cancer is infection of the cervix with human papillomavirus (HPV), particularly with high-risk HPV genotypes.

The identification of specific HPV genotypes is important, as various HPV genotypes and multiple infections pose different risks to the affected pa-tients. HPV DNA tests are detecting ongoing infections and cervical lesions but their specificity for ab-sence disease is low. In contrast, high viral load was shown to improve the specificity significantly. There is a need for more reliable tests detecting and quantifying different human papillomavirus (HPV) genotypes and, in particular, the high-risk and putative high-risk genotypes.

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DKFZ (German Cancer Research Center, Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum)
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Dr. Ruth Herzog