Prevalence of Human Papilloma Virus Types in Turkish and Albanian Women

BACKGROUND: Human papilloma virus (HPV) infection is the major etiologic agent of cervical carcinoma. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of HPV infection and genotype distribution in cervical swabs from 2,234 Turkish and 357 Albanian women with similar lifestyles from two different countries. MATERIALS AND METHODS: HPV detection and typing were performed by type specific multiplex fluorescent PCR and fragments were directly genotyped by high resolution fluorescence capillary electrophoresis. RESULTS: The most common type was HPV 16 and the second one was HPV 6 for both country. The third common type was 39 and 18 for Turkish and Albanian women, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: When we compare our results with other studies, there are differences between the frequency and order of the HPV genotypes detected at the second and subsequent frequencies. This may due to differences in the quality and type of samples analyzed, as well as the HPV detection methods.