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Review
. 2014 Sep 16:349:g5264.
doi: 10.1136/bmj.g5264.

Accuracy of urinary human papillomavirus testing for presence of cervical HPV: systematic review and meta-analysis

Neha Pathak  1 , Julie Dodds  1 , Javier Zamora  2 , Khalid Khan  1
Affiliations
Review

Accuracy of urinary human papillomavirus testing for presence of cervical HPV: systematic review and meta-analysis

Neha Pathak et al. BMJ. .

Abstract

Objective: To determine the accuracy of testing for human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA in urine in detecting cervical HPV in sexually active women.

Design: Systematic review and meta-analysis.

Data sources: Searches of electronic databases from inception until December 2013, checks of reference lists, manual searches of recent issues of relevant journals, and contact with experts.

Eligibility criteria: Test accuracy studies in sexually active women that compared detection of urine HPV DNA with detection of cervical HPV DNA.

Data extraction and synthesis: Data relating to patient characteristics, study context, risk of bias, and test accuracy. 2 × 2 tables were constructed and synthesised by bivariate mixed effects meta-analysis.

Results: 16 articles reporting on 14 studies (1443 women) were eligible for meta-analysis. Most used commercial polymerase chain reaction methods on first void urine samples. Urine detection of any HPV had a pooled sensitivity of 87% (95% confidence interval 78% to 92%) and specificity of 94% (95% confidence interval 82% to 98%). Urine detection of high risk HPV had a pooled sensitivity of 77% (68% to 84%) and specificity of 88% (58% to 97%). Urine detection of HPV 16 and 18 had a pooled sensitivity of 73% (56% to 86%) and specificity of 98% (91% to 100%). Metaregression revealed an increase in sensitivity when urine samples were collected as first void compared with random or midstream (P=0.004).

Limitations: The major limitations of this review are the lack of a strictly uniform method for the detection of HPV in urine and the variation in accuracy between individual studies.

Conclusions: Testing urine for HPV seems to have good accuracy for the detection of cervical HPV, and testing first void urine samples is more accurate than random or midstream sampling. When cervical HPV detection is considered difficult in particular subgroups, urine testing should be regarded as an acceptable alternative.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf and declare: no support from any organisation for the submitted work; no financial relationships with any organisations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

Figures

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Fig 1 Study selection process
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Fig 2 QUADAS-2 quality assessment of 14 studies included in meta-analysis
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Fig 3 Receiver operating characteristic plots for studies evaluating accuracy of detecting human papillomavirus (HPV) in urine compared with in cervix
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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