Two thousand women aged 18-77 years were enrolled in an opportunistic cervical cancer screening program and were randomized into self-vaginal or health professional-guided cervical sampling groups. The Qiagen careHPV? test was performed on all samples. Pap tests were performed on all women using liquid-based cytology.
Positive hr-HPV results were obtained in 12.3 % (245/2000) of women; similar rates were observed in self- or health professional-collected samples. Eighty-nine percent (1719/2000) of cervical cytologies classified as normal were negative to hr-HPV. Among the cytological samples, 36.6 % classified as ASC-US + were positive to hr-HPV, 78.8 % were LSIL and 75.0 % were HSIL.
Self-sampled and health professional-sampled vaginal/cervical specimens did not differ in their rates of detection of hr-HPV. Therefore, HPV DNA testing in self-sampled vaginal cells is an alternative to primary screening in low-resource settings.