Prevalence of Oncogenic HPV Types in Sardinia (Italy): Implications for the Impact of Prophylactic Anti-HPV Vaccines

Infection with high-risk HPV genotypes is considered an essential step in cervical carcinogenesis. Recently, prophylactic anti-HPV vaccines have shown to provide effective protection in clinical trials. However, protection appears to be type-restricted, thus, its real extent will depend on HPV types prevalence in the target population. Here we report HPV prevalence in 555 Italian women with various stages of HPV-related cervical disease (343 CIN1/L-SIL, 156 CIN2-3/HIGH-SIL, 43 invasive squamous cervical carcinoma and 13 adenocarcinoma), as well as in 315 women with smears negative for intraepithelial lesions or malignancy (NIL). HPV was found in 50.7% of CIN1/L-SIL, 87.2% of CIN2-3/HIGH-SIL, 97.7% of squamous carcinomas, 69.2% of adenocarcinomas and in 29.5% of NIL. HPV 16 was present in 69.0% of squamous carcinomas, 58.8% of CIN2-3/HIGH-SIL, in 22.9 and 16.1% of CIN1/L-SIL and NIL, respectively. HPV 18 was found in 7.3% and 4.8%, respectively, while in 35.3% and 26.2% of CIN2-3/HIGH-SIL and invasive carcinomas, respectively, were present high-risk HPV types other than type 16 and 18. Based on these data, it is expected that current HPV prophylactic vaccines could effectively prevent up to 70% of invasive cervical cancers and a slightly smaller proportion of high-grade lesions, in our population.