Study on the prevalence and subtypes of human papillomavirus infection among women in the Xuhui District, Shanghai City, China

BACKGROUND: Human papillomavirus (HPV) can cause various gynecological diseases, create a long-term inflammatory immune microenvironment, and induce the occurrence of cervical tumors. However, the prevalence of HPV is species-specific in different eras or in different countries and regions. This paper aimed to investigate the characteristics of HPV infection in the Xuhui District, Shanghai City, China. METHODS: We collected HPV data from 6,760 female testers, focusing on the younger population for data analysis. We focused more on the HPV subtypes to which young women were susceptible, performed t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (TSNE) analysis to screen for characteristic subtypes, and compared the prevalent subtypes lacking effective vaccine protection. RESULTS: HPV infection exhibited a trend of affecting a younger population, and eight subtypes were more likely to occur in young people. HPV43, 51, 53, and 59 showed a higher incidence and lacked vaccine protection. We performed TSNE dimensionality reduction analysis to organize the HPV data. The results indicated that HPV16, 18, and 51 are characteristic subtypes in the younger population. The Thinprep cytologic test (TCT) also revealed that the infection with HPV43, 51, 53, and 59 also triggers significant pathological phenotypes. CONCLUSIONS: HPV51 is a subtype that occurs more frequently in young women, can induce a variety of significant pathological features, and lacks effective vaccine protection. This study inspires us to take measures to deal with HPV rejuvenation and conduct research on vaccines for specific HPV subtypes.