Association between Human papillomavirus infection and abnormal cytopathology of uterine cervix in Baghdad women

Background: Human papillomavirus (HPV) is considered one of sexually transferred disease in the world and it is considered as one of the causative agents of cervical cancer. Cervical cytology is used widely as the initial tool in cervical cancer screening worldwide. Objective: The purpose of this study was to analyze the correlation between cytological findings from Papanicolaou (pap.)-stained cervical smears and cases of HPV infection of the uterine cervix as identified by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing. Methodology: Between June 2021 and December 2022, retrospective study for cervical smears of 370 Baghdad women (attending to the Central Public Health Laboratory (CPHL)/Ministry of Health in Baghdad) were stained by the Pap procedure and categorized by the Bethesda classification system, High Risk-Human papilloma Virus (HR-HPV) detection was used to analyze the HPV status of the cervical samples that were collected Results: HR-HPV testing was done for 370 women (230 women that have shown Positive results for HR-HPV and 140 were negative for HPV). Our result showed highly significant differences at (P ≤ 0.01) for HR-HPV genotype and abnormal Pap smear with High grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (HSIL) at 23.9 %, while it was at 41.3% with low grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (LSIL) Pap smear which represent the highest rate, in addition to 34.7% for abnormal Pap smear with atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASCUS) classification Conclusion: This study has shown that molecular investigation for HR-HPV might be essential for diagnosis of patients with proven epithelial abnormality in their Pap smears.