Is there a reliable way to diagnose an HPV infection?
“DNA-hybridization techniques and the recently introduced DNA amplification with PCR are extremely difficult to standardize, and are thus subject to major interlaboratory variation”
“genital HPV infections seem to run an extremely fluctuating course, passage from manifest to subclinical or latent infection being frequently encountered in individual patients when examined at 6-month intervals over prolonged periods. This explains the significantly divergent prevalence figures reported in different series (ranging from 2% to 80%), which are completely dependent on the technique used to analyse the presence of HPV,”
SYRJÄNEN, KARI J. “Epidemiology of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Infections and Their Associations with Genital Squamous Cell Cancer.” APMIS, vol. 97, no. 7-12, July 1989, pp. 957–970,doi.org/10.1111/j.1699-…. onlinelibrary.wiley.com…