Vadakkoot Padmanabhan Indu, Usha Poothiode, Lailaraji Navamoni, Pulickal Hariharan Prasad
BACKGROUND Cervical cancer is the second most frequent cancer in women in the world. The association of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) infection with cervical carcinogenesis is well documented and nearly all cervical cancers are caused by persistent infection with some high-risk HPV types. In developed countries, there has been a major decline in cervical-cancer mortality after the introduction of large-scale cytological testing but in developing countries, due to lack of effective screening programmes for cervical cancer no clinically significant reduction in the incidence of cervical cancer has occurred during the past three decades. Pap smear is a routine screening test, but the overall sensitivity in detection of HSIL - precancerous lesion is only 70 to 80% and histopathological diagnosis of cervical biopsy is prone to poor inter observer reproducibility. Immunohistochemical staining for biomarkers like p16INK4a a sensitive marker for Human Papilloma Virus, may provide objective standards to reduce diagnostic variability of cervical biopsy evaluations. Objectives of the study were to study the proportion of HPV infection in uterine cervical neoplasia using immunohistochemistry for the marker p16INK4a in cervical biopsy specimens and to assess the proportion of P16 expression in varying grades of cervical neoplasia included in the study.
