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Human papillomavirus testing after abnormal cytology improves detection of high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia lesions but with associated increases in biopsy and loop electrosurgical excision procedure rates, researchers report.

Primary screening for human papillomavirus detects cervical neoplasia earlier and more accurately than cytology, results of the HPV FOCAL trial suggest.

In addition, 3.1% of women had one false–positive result that involved an invasive procedure (fine-needle aspiration cytology, core-needle biopsy, or open biopsy), and 0.1% experienced this on two or more occasions.

Chinese researchers have developed a noninvasive test for urothelial cancer, based on low-coverage whole-genome sequencing, that has better sensitivity and comparable specificity to that of cytology.

The researchers report in The Lancet Oncology that 59% of the 71 trial participants, had a complete response, defined as negative ureteroscopic evaluation, negative cytology, and negative for-cause biopsy, to UGN-101 treatment within 6 weeks of completion of the initial therapy.

Andreas Keller (Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany) and colleagues say their findings “suggest that the identified patterns of circulating microRNAs may enable them to be used as biomarkers in a liquid biopsy to complement imaging tests, sputum cytology, and biopsies.”

. © 2018 Springer Healthcare part of the Springer Nature group See also: HPV vaccine reassurance for younger women Primary HPV screening cuts CIN3+ cases by half versus cytology

“If a patient has an indication for surgery other than cytology, then there is little value in pursuing any molecular testing.”

The analysis included 944,227 women aged 30–64 years who underwent screening by cytology and human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA co-testing at Kaiser Permanente Northern California in Oakland, USA, between 2003 and 2015.

  [7] Liquid biopsies as a surrogate for tissue biopsy As previously mentioned, a major challenge for precision medicine approaches that require detailed molecular analysis and/or immunohistochemistry panels is that SCLC is usually diagnosed from a small biopsy or cytology specimen.