Vol. 1, Issue 10, Part O (2015)

Abstract
Background: The past decade witnessed an interest in study of actual prevalence of HPV infection in patients of lupus, renal transplant recipients on immunosuppressant and HIV positive subjects. Since Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), like SLE, is an immunologically mediated disease, it is logical to suspect an association between RA and persistence of HPV infection. Objective: To estimate the prevalence of high risk HPV infection (types 16 and 18) in cervical smears of women with rheumatoid arthritis. Material and Method: Analytical, cross-sectional studies of 150 women with rheumatoid arthritis selected from the rheumatology clinic of PGIMER (Chandigarh). Endocervical brushings were taken. The sample was then processed and subjected to DNA extraction and PCR for HPV 16 and 18. Prevalence was calculated and subjected to analysis using p value. Results: A total of 150 female patients with rheumatoid arthritis were enrolled in the study. Out of the 150 patients, in 28 patients (18.7%), DNA could not be extracted due to inadequatesampling.A total of 112 /122(91.8%) patients were negative for both strains of HPV. While 10 patients (8.2%) were positive for either HPV type 16 or 18, 9 were positive only for HPV type 16 (7.4%) while 1 was positive for HPV type 16 as well as type 18 (0.8%). None of the cases was positive for HPV type 18 only. Conclusion: The prevalence of HPV (high-risk types) in patients of RA as seen in the index study was definitely higher than the regional data provided by Aggarwal et al37 for asymptomatic healthy women in the same center although the level of significance was not high.