The Prevalence of High- and Low-Risk Human Papillomaviruses in the Russian Federation

An assessment was made of high- and low-risk human papillomaviruses (HPVs) prevalence in the Russian Federation. Clinical samples (urogenital swabs) were obtained from male and female patients of different ages with supposed urogenital HPV infection living in different regions of the Russian Federation in 2019 (n = 12 945). HPV genotyping was performed using a real-time PCR Kvant-21 kit (DNA-Technology, Russia), which allows differentiating between the high-risk HPV types 31, 35, 52, 33, 68, 45, 82, 51, 39, 58, 66, 26, 53, 59, 56, 73, 16, and 18 and low-risk HPV types 6, 11, and 44. In the clinical samples obtained from 5013 patients, 8593 HPV strains were detected with HPV monoinfection being observed in 3057 patients and mixed infection in 1956 patients. It was shown that, in the Russian Federation, the dominant HPV-types are HPV16, 13.8% (95% CI 13.0-14.5); HPV6, 10.7% (10.0-11.3); HPV51, 6.8% (6.3-7.3); HPV44, 6.8% (6.2-7.3); HPV53, 6.3% (5.8-6.8); HPV31, 5.6% (5.2-6.2); HPV56, 5.5% (5.0-6.0); and HPV52, 5.4% (5.0-5.9), while the percentage of other types varied from 5 to 0.4%. The age, gender, and regional distribution of different HPV types has been described. The results of monitoring circulating HPV strains will allow the effectiveness to be predicted of HPV vaccines of different composition in the Russian Federation and may be used to a great extent in the development of Russian HPV vaccines.