Vaginal Self-Sampling for Human Papillomavirus Infection as a Primary Cervical Cancer Screening Tool in a Haitian Population

Background Human papillomavirus (HPV) testing as primary cervical cancer screening has not been studied in Caribbean women. We tested vaginal self-collection versus physician cervical sampling in a population of Haitian women. Methods Participants were screened for high-risk HPV with self-performed vaginal and clinician-collected cervical samples using Hybrid Capture 2 assays (Qiagen, Gaithersburg, MD). Women positive by either method then underwent colposcopy with biopsy of all visible lesions. Sensitivity and positive predictive value were calculated for each sample method compared with biopsy results, with statistics performed for agreement. McNemar tests were performed for differences in sensitivity at cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN)-I and CIN-II. Results Of 1845 women screened, 446 (24.3%) were HPV positive by either method, including 105 (5.7%) only by vaginal swab and 53 (2.9%) only by cervical swab. Vaginal and cervical samples were 91.4% concordant ( = 0.73 [95% confidence interval, 0.69-0.77], P < 0.001). Overall, 133 HPV-positive women (29.9%) had CIN-I, whereas 32 (7.2%) had CIN-II. The sensitivity of vaginal swabs was similar to cervical swabs for detecting CIN-I (89.1% vs. 87.9%, respectively; P = 0.75) lesions and CIN-II disease (87.5% vs. 96.9%, P = 0.18). Eighteen of 19 cases of CIN-III and invasive cancer were found by both methods. Conclusions Human papillomavirus screening via self-collected vaginal swabs or physician-collected cervical swabs are feasible options in this Haitian population. The agreement between cervical and vaginal samples was high, suggesting that vaginal sample-only algorithms for screening could be effective for improving screening rates in this underscreened population.