Acceptability and response to a postal survey using self-taken samples for HPV vaccine impact monitoring

Abstract

Some women were willing to participate in anonymised postal testing. However, the low uptake means that HPV prevalence results are difficult to interpret for ongoing surveillance. Monitoring HPV vaccine impact outwith the cervical screening programme remains challenging.

Estimation of HPV prevalence in young women in Scotland; monitoring of future vaccine impact

“…This is unlikely to be the case. As this study shows a consistent gradient of increasing HPV positivity with increasing SIMD deprivation levels and the screening defaulters have a greater preponderance of SIMD1 (deprived) individuals compared to those who attend for screening [8] we would have anticipated greater HPV positivity among the defaulters. We therefore conclude that the differences are likely due to the different specimen types and the baseline HPV patterns within the defaulter population is likely to be similar to the attenders - consequently the on-going assessment of the impact of HPV vaccination in Scotland will be based on LBC samples.…”

“…Many prevalence studies are restricted to populations that attend for cervical screening, those under investigation for cervical abnormalities detected or those accessing sexual health services [15,16]. In this study of unvaccinated 20 and 21 year olds in Scotland eligible for their first cervical screen, we have obtained samples from both those attending screening and defaulters, albeit the latter limited by a low response rate to the PTK -13.2% [8], in order to estimate pre-immunisation HPV prevalence in this cross-section of the population.…”

“…Half of the randomly selected women were sent a urine test kit and half a self-taken vaginal swab kit. Details of the methodology are reported elsewhere [8]. …”

“…The target sample size in the postal testing kit study was 1000 in order to give a 90% power to detect differences in HPV positivity of ± 6% points between screening defaulters and attenders. The actual sample achieved was 709, from a 13.2% response rate to the study, see [8] for more details.…”

Highlights from this issue

“…While clinical diagnoses are an important form of human papilloma virus surveillance, they sample a limited population. Sinka et al 2 report a feasibility study of postal self-sampling for monitoring the impact of human papilloma virus vaccination, concluding that low uptake is likely to limit its utility.…”