Human Telomerase Gene and High-Risk Human Papillomavirus Infection are Related to Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia

Our aims were to evaluate the clinical performance of human telomerase RNA gene component (hTERCgene) amplification assay with high-risk human papillomavirus (HR-HPV) DNA test of Hybrid Capture 2 DNAtest (HC2), for the detection of high grade cervical precancerous lesions and cancer (CIN 2+). In addition, theassociation shown between hTERC gene amplification and HPV DNA test positive in women with and withoutcervical neoplasia was assessed. There were 92 women who underwent cytology, HR-HPV DNA test, hTERCgene amplification test, colposcopy and biopsy. We compared the clinical performance of hTERC gene testalong with HR-HPV DNA test of women with colposcopy and routine screening. The samples were histologyconfirmedhigh-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN 2) or worse (CIN2+) as the positive criterion. Thetest of hTERC gene showed the hTERC gene amplification positivity increased with the severity of histologicalabnormality and cytological abnormality. The test of hTERC gene showed higher specificity than HR-HPV DNAtest for high-grade lesions (84.4% versus 50%) and also higher positive predictive value (90.4% versus 76.5%).Our results predicted that hTERC gene amplification demonstrated more specific performance for predictingthe risk of progression and offer a strong potential as a tool for triage in cervical cancer screening, with thelimited sensitive as HR-HPV DNA test.