Visitors and news

The aim of the WHO Cancer Country Profile is to synthesize the current status of cancer control for each WHO Member States as well as by WHO Regions. These profiles establish an updated country baseline and support monitoring trends toward the achievement of global commitments including Sustainable Development Goal to reduce premature mortality, current policy response and service availability including cancer plans and capacity in cancer early detection, the Elimination of cervical cancer as a public health problem. View the WHO website.

In this article published in Vaccine Journal, authors discussed the evaluation of serological assays to monitor antibody responses to single-dose HPV vaccines. The results support the utility of existing serological assays to monitor antibody responses following single-dose HPV vaccination. View the publication.

Authors of this pooled analysis published in the Chinese Journal of Cancer Research, aimed to determine whether multi-quadrants biopsy improves the yield of cervical lesions. Their findings add evidences for an objective and practical biopsy standard to guide colposcopy in cervical cancer screening programs in low- and middle-income countries. They concluded that A 4-quadrant random biopsy is recommended only for hrHPV positive females with HSIL cytology, and is acceptable if hrHPV positive with LSIL cytology or with abnormal VIA/VILI. View the publication.

This article published in Cancer Prevention Research, reports a pool analysis to compare the clinical characteristics of HPV positive and negative cervical precancers. Pooled data across many studies shows that HPV-negative CIN2+ systematically were less like to test positive for any biomarkers associated with invasive cancer risk compared to HPV-positive CIN2+. Biomarkers associated to the diagnostic tissue may help but p16 immunohistochemistry does it imperfectly. View the article.

In this correspondence published in the Lancet Public Health, authors recommend to allocate sufficient resources to sustain HPV vaccination and cancer screening in the future in European countries to support the WHO’s call to eliminate cervical cancer. The COVID-19 pandemic might also generate opportunities for more efficient prevention, by promoting more cost-effective, evidence-based protocols, by focusing on women who are at high-risk, extending HPV testing on self-collected samples, and discouraging inefficient policies, such as screening with two tests. View the commentary.

The Screening Group organized a virtual meeting with Dr Du Lingbin’s team from Department of Cancer Prevention, Zhejiang Cancer Hospital. We introduced the Cancer Screening in 5 Continents project (CanScreen5) and discussed about cancer screening activities in Zhejiang Province, followed by the potential research collaborations in cancer screening field.

The Screening Group organized this meeting for all principal investigators, programme managers, and key collaborators from the study sites involved in this project, to discuss the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on the implementation of the study.

This reports addresses for the first time the question how Europe could answer to the ambitious call from the World Health Organisation to reduce the incidence of cervical cancer to less than 4/100 000/year by reaching, by the 2030 >90, 70 and 90% coverage for HPV vaccination, HPV-based screening and management of screen-positive women, respectively. The occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic, having interrupted prevention activities temporarily, should not deviate stakeholders from this ambition. The authors of this paper underline the need for a new third edition of EU guidelines for integrated primary and secondary prevention of cervical cancer. View the article.

The Federation of Obstetric and Gynecological Societies of India (FOGSI) convened an expert group on cervical cancer prevention to formulate good clinical practice recommendations (GCPR) with respect to vaccine efficacy and safety, target groups, optimal timing and dosing schedules. Experts concluded that HPV vaccination should be the priority to achieve the elimination of cervical cancer. The introduction of affordable HPV vaccines and reduced dose schedules will improve coverage. View the publication.

In this commentary published in HPVWORLD, Dr Partha Basu and colleagues demonstrate that protection against the vaccine-targeted HPV types (HPV16 and 18) or the cross-protective types (HPV31, 33 and 45) is similar in the 15-18 year-old women irrespective of whether they received two doses or three doses.
View the commentary.