Natural History Of Oral Human Papillomavirus In Nigerian Mothers And Youth With And Without HIV: A Prospective Cohort Study

Oral HPV was detected in 10.4% of participants in the Nigerian HOMINY mother-youth cohort, but persistence was rare at 1.9%, with only 3 positive at all four visits.

• Why it matters: Natural history of oral HPV persistence is poorly defined in sub-Saharan Africa and among PLWH, limiting understanding of long-term risk and vaccine relevance.
• What they did: In 1075 participants (404 mothers, 671 youth) followed across four 6-month visits, oral rinses were genotyped for 28 HPV types using the Seegene Allplex HPV28 assay. Persistence was defined as detection at ≥2 visits, and Markov multistate models estimated acquisition and clearance.
• The result: Clearance predominated across every interval, while clearance was slower in PLWH (HR 0.42, 95% CI 0.22–0.77) with no acquisition difference (HR 0.77, 95% CI 0.39–1.5); persistence was concentrated among PLWH. Only 31.2% of ever-positive participants had a Gardasil-9 preventable strain, with HPV16 and HPV39 most frequent.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.