Recent Advances in Human Papillomavirus Detection and Genotyping

Worldwide, cervical cancer is the second-most common cancer and a leading cause of cancer-related deaths in developing countries. Epidemiological and biological studies have identified Human papillomavirus (HPV) as etiological agent for cervical cancer. Currently, it’s widely accepted that 40 among 200 genotypes of HPV considered as high risk are implicated in the development of other human cancers. The diagnosis of cervical cancer and precancerous lesions is mainly based on cytological screening that have largely contributed to reduce the prevalence of cervical cancer in both developed and developing countries. Although this screening has decreased the incidence of cervical cancer, cytological techniques lack sensitivity and HPV-related cervical disease, including premalignant and malignant lesions, continues to be a major burden on health-care systems. The current trend in cervical cancer screening is to improve the sensitivity of screening with new methods and to propose new algorithms for diagnostic and early therapeutic decisions. Recent achievement in molecular approaches have emerged in clinical practices, are characterized by high sensitivity, specificity and the short time required to perform the procedure, which explain the great interest given to these techniques for HPV testing. These techniques are widely used for HPV detection and/or genotyping, they are based on signal amplification methods (hybridization techniques in liquid phase) or target amplification methods (gene amplification by PCR). This review paper was edited to summarize the main molecular techniques used in HPV testing and recent advances for HPV detection and genotyping.