RESUMO
OBJECTIVE: Human papillomavirus (HPV) testing as the primary cervical cancer screening followed by reflex cytology if high-risk HPV is present (hrHPV+) is recently adopted in some countries. However, reflex cytology's sensitivity is variable, and a suitable triage approach for hrHPV+ remains controversial. Here, we compared the performance of three triage tools in hrHPV+ women. METHODS: Three triage tools-cytology, HPV16/18 genotyping, and DNA methylation biomarker PAX1m-were analyzed for their clinical performance in hrHPV+ women. In addition, women without cervical cancer at enrollment were followed for histologically confirmed high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia or worse (CIN3+) annually using Papanicolaou smear. RESULTS: Of 4762 women aged ≥20 years enrolled, 502 (10.5%) were hrHPV+. PAX1m and cytology demonstrated similar accuracy (>90%), sensitivity (>78%), and specificity (>92%) as triage tools in 429 hrHPV+ women aged 30-64 years. PAX1m had better accuracy and specificity (91.6% and 92.5%, respectively) than HPV16/18 (76.9% and 76.8%, respectively). The incidence of CIN3+ among hrHPV+ women was 10.7 cases/1000 person-years. The incidence was significantly greater in PAX1m-positive women than in PAX1m-negative women. CONCLUSIONS: PAX1m has comparable clinical performance to cytology and better accuracy and specificity than HPV16/18 as the triage tool for detecting CIN3+ in hrHPV+ women. The PAX1m assay is thus a promising molecular-based triage tool for early detection of CIN and predicting disease progression in hrHPV+ women. It can be especially useful in countries where adequate cytology-based infrastructure is lacking, such as some Southeast Asian countries, for cervical cancer screening and prevention.