Human papilloma virus E6/E7 messenger RNA as a biomarker for detecting the risk evaluation of cervical cancer progression: overview of recent clinical trials

Abstract

Cervical cancer is one of the major women health problems, which is considered to be responsible for significant percentage of cancer related deaths in low and middle income countries. While Human Papilloma virus (HPV) DNA testing has an established role in cervical cancer prevention, there is a need to use other biomarkers with higher specificity and prognostic value to recognize patients at risk of progressive illness. There are evidences suggest that, direct detection of HPV messenger RNA transcripts may establish a more specific method for defining clinically important infection than viral DNA detection. Our objective was to provide an overview of the literature on specificity of HPV mRNA testing compared to DNA testing for detecting the risk evaluation of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia and invasive cervical cancer. We focused on recent clinical studies that support the application of HPV E6/E7 mRNA as a marker in advanced cervical cancer screening program. We provide overview of sample size, recruitment setting, age, HPV mRNA and HPV DNA assays for researches included in our review. The pooled review of clinical studies provided evidence that HPV mRNA might be a relevant diagnostic biomarker but additional studies need to be developed in order to make strong conclusion