Triage methods for cervical cancer detection show moderate accuracy and present considerable false-negative and false-positive result rates. A complementary diagnostic parameter could help improve the accuracy of identifying patients who need treatment. A pilot study was performed using a targeted proteomics approach with opportunistic ThinPrep samples obtained from women collected at the hospital’s outpatient clinic to determine the concentration levels of minichromosome maintenance-3 (MCM3) and envoplakin (EVPL) proteins. Forty samples with ’negative for intraepithelial lesion or malignancy’ (NILM), 21 samples with ‘atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance’ (ASC-US), and 33 samples with ‘low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion and worse’ (≥LSIL) were analyzed, using cytology and the patients’ histology reports. Highly accurate concordance was obtained for gold-standard-confirmed samples, demonstrating that the MCM3/EVPL ratio can discriminate between non-dysplastic and dysplastic samples. On that account, we propose that MCM3 and EVPL are promising candidate protein biomarkers for population-based cervical cancer screening.

Background: Prophylactic human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines are highly effective in reducing premalignant lesions of the cervix. Recurrence is reported up to 17%. Little is known about the effect of HPV vaccines on women with CIN who already are HPV infected and CIN. Objective: Review of the literature addressing the question whether adjuvant vaccination with an HPV-vaccine in addition to LEEP treatment is effective in preventing recurrence of CIN-lesions. Search strategy: Medline search using Mesh terms. Selection criteria: Studies on HPV vaccination in addition to a LEEP procedure. One of the study parameters had to describe the effect of vaccination in addition to a surgical treatment. Data collection and Analysis: All results were assessed by two reviewers and meta-analysis performed. Main result: Six studies met the inclusion and exclusion criteria: one case report, three post-hoc analyses, one case-control study and one retrospective study. In the post-hoc analysis of three community-based clinical trials; the combined recurrence rate of CIN2+ was 1.49% (12/806) in the HPV-vaccinated group versus 3.51% (37/1052) in the non-HPV vaccinated group, with a combined RR of 0.41 (95% CI 0.21-0.78; P<0.01). The retrospective and the case-control study combined, reported an incidence of 2.07% (11/532) versus 6.92% (38/549