Analytic performance of PANArray HPV and HPV 9G DNA chip tests for genotyping of high-risk human papillomavirus in cervical ThinPrep PreservCyt samples

The detection of high-risk human papillomavirus (HR-HPV) is important for early diagnosis of precancerous cervical lesion. The distribution of HR-HPV genotypes in East Asia is different from that in Western countries. HR-HPVs non-16/18 including HPV-58 are highly prevalent in East Asia. Thus, a variety of HPV tests that could identify individual genotypes have been widely used. HPV 9G DNA is a deoxyribonucleic acid-based chip test, while PANArray HPV chip is a peptide nucleic acid-based array. We compared the analytic performance of these two chips for detecting and genotyping HR-HPV using 356 liquid-based cytology specimens and evaluated their diagnostic accuracies based on direct sequencing. For identifying HR-HPV, PANArray HPV and HPV 9G DNA chips agreed with each other for 85.1% of samples. Overall strength of agreement between the two tests was substantial (k = 0.68). Specifically, these two tests almost perfectly agreed for detecting several types of HR-HPV, including HPV-16, -18, -35, -52, -58, and -59 (k>0.81 for all). According to direct sequencing, PANArray HPV produced consistently higher sensitivities for detecting HR-HPV than HPV 9G DNA for either overall or individual genotypes of HR-HPV. Sensitivities and specificities for detecting HPV-58 were perfect (100%) with PANArray HPV. In conclusion, PANArray HPV is more effective than HPV 9G DNA in detecting HR-HPV. It is more useful for regions with high prevalent HPV-58 infection.