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Abstract: Objective: Patients with positive screening results and persistence of high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) infection represent the population at the highest risk for developing cervical cancer. To describe the epidemiology in this high-risk population, data were collected and analysed at the referral centre for patients with positive cytology. Study design: Between January 1997 and December 2002 the authors performed 3480 virus identifications using the Digene Hybrid Capture® system in a female population with positive cytology at cervical cancer screening. Age-specific prevalence data were evaluated and compared between the age groups by running the χ 2 and Pearson χ 2 tests. Subgroup analysis was performed to estimate monthly clearance rates among eligible women with positive HR-HPV results. Results: Low-risk (LR), high-risk (HR) and double infections were detected in 91 cases (2.6%), 1072 cases (30.8%) and 59 cases (1.7%), respectively. A significantly higher incidence of high-, rather than low-risk HPV infections was found in all age groups (p <0.001). Also, in this high-risk population with positive screening a significant decrease was detected in the prevalence of both high- and low-risk infections beyond 35 years of age (p <0.001). However, the decline in the HR-HPV types occurred later than in the case of LR infections, and HR-HPV was of remarkable frequency in the older age groups, which might represent both incidental and prevalent cases. Subgroup analysis for estimating monthly clearance rates revealed no significant differences between the various age groups and between women with various cytology results. Conclusions: In a population with positive cytology the prevalence of HPV drops with age while the relative frequency of high-risk HPV infection remains at the same level as that of the youngest age group. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Introduction Peritoneal dissemination accompanied by ascites formation is common in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). Adhesion molecules are crucial in metastatic spread and the latter involves epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). This study aimed at: (1) clarifying whether E-cadherin and β-catenin expression and proliferative activity in metastatic ovarian cancer are inter-related; (2) Identifying possible correlations between cell adhesion molecular expression profiles, the proliferative activity and p53 expression of tumor cells and tumor grade and stage; (3) testing the cytology microarray (CMA) technique in analyzing metastasis formation. Material and methods Both tumorous and ascitic samples from 27 EOC patients were examined by using tissue microarray (TMA) and cytology microarray (CMA), respectively. CMA blocks were constructed using cores from each cell block of the ascitic specimens. Expression of E-cadherin, β-catenin, Ki-67 and p53 was immunohistochemically detected both in TMA and CMA blocks. Results E-cadherin expression was higher in ascitic cells than in primary tumor cells (p = .294). β-catenin expression was significantly lower in ascitic cells than in primary tumor cells (p = .006). Expression of Ki-67 was lower and expression of p53 was higher in primary tumors than in ascitic cells, for p53 the difference was significant (p = .001). Both Ki-67 and p53 expression elevated significantly in high-grade primary tumor cells and in ascites cells (p = .039, and p = .004, respectively). Conclusion Epithelial-mesenchymal transition- mesenchymal-epithelial transition is suggested as the best descriptive term for our IHC observations which accompany increased proliferative activity of ascitic cells. The CMA method is an adequate and reliable method for the analysis of ascitic tumor cells disseminating from ovarian malignancies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]