Application Of An Electrochemical Lamp-Based Assay For Screening Of Hpv16/Hpv18 Infection In Cervical Samples

Cervical cancer is caused by a persistent infection with high-risk types of human papillomaviruses (HPVs), especially HPV16 and HPV18. HPV testing therefore represents an important alternative to standard cytological screening. However, existing HPV tests are often laborious, expensive or time-consuming, and thus novel techniques are developed that would be inexpensive, rapid, easy to perform and could be implemented in low-resource settings. In this work, we show an early application of an electrochemical (EC) assay combined with loop-mediated amplification (LAMP) to determine HPV16 and HPV18 status directly in a clinical material. To demonstrate its potential usefulness, we screened 61 cervical samples for the presence of both genotypes, and compared the results with the gold standard - PCR amplification followed by gel electrophoresis and two commercial HPV tests - COBAS and INNO-LiPA. The best concordance was obtained with the PCR reaction; we obtained high significance (p-value <0.0001) and positive and negative predictive values over 90%. These data indicate that the EC-LAMP assay may serve as an interesting tool for rapid screening of oncogenic HPVs.