Occurrence of human papillomavirus in uterine cervix of women in the western Brazilian Amazon

The occurrence of human papillomavirus (HPV) is a public health problem, because it has been linked to cancer. The aim of this research was to identify the occurrence of human papillomavirus in uterine cervix of women in the western Brazilian Amazon. The study was conducted in the capital of Rondonia, Porto Velho. We identified the types of HPV, also we correlated molecular results with those of colpocytologic tests coming from 334 women who underwent preventive examinations at the Brazilian Unified Health System. From samples, we obtained genetic material of the human papillomavirus (HPV ADN) and amplified the 450-bp fragment from the conserved region of the L1 gene, which was submitted to restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis. Of the 334 samples analyzed, 31% were confirmed to have the presence of viral material (HPV ADN). We detected the existence of the following HPV types: 16, 18, 33, 53 and 58, which identifies the group of high oncogenic risk, with 72% (74/103) of occurrence. Also we found HPV types 11, 42 and 44, which belong to the group of low oncogenic risk, with 28% of occurrence. The recurrent profiles in the development of the analysis were HPV-16 and -18, with 17% and 16% respectively. We found that more than 80% of the samples that contained viral material did not show any abnormal cell in the cytology test. This finding reinforces the need to disseminate the use of molecular techniques in conventional diagnostics.