Age-specific prevalence of HPV16/18 genotypes in cervical cancer: A systematic review and meta-analysis

The prevalence of HPV16/18 in cervical cancer has been reported to decline with age in some papers. However, whether this decline in proportion of cancers positive for HPV16/18 is consistently observed across studies remains to be elucidated. Thus, the aim of this study was to identify papers reporting data on age-specific prevalence of HPV16/18 in cervical cancer and to summarize the results. We employed MEDLINE and Embase for a systematic literature search and thereby identified a total of 644 papers published in the period 1999-2015, of which 15 papers, reporting cross-sectional data, were included for review (11,526 cervical cancers). The prevalence of HPV16/18 in cervical cancer declined significantly with age (=-0.83, p=0.04) from 74.8% (95% CI 67.6-80.8) in women aged 30-39 years to 56.8% (95% CI 43.9-68.8) in women aged 70 years. As the HPV16/18 positive cancers are prevented in fully vaccinated cohorts, the age-specific epidemiology of cervical cancer is anticipated to change, with a shift in peak incidence rate to older ages. It will be important for integrated vaccination and screening strategies to consider predicted change in the age-specific epidemiology of cervical cancer.