Smoking and cancer of the cervix

The histopathology of biopsies taken from women attending a New Zealand colposcopy clinic

Analysis of the histopathology of biopsies taken from 1371 women attending the Dunedin Hospital Colposcopy Clinic during the period 1982-1988 showed that CIN3, either alone or in conjunction with human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, was the most commonly encountered abnormality. Women under the age of 29 years accounted for 58.3% of the CIN3 lesions. There was also a dramatic increase in the number of women with evidence of HPV infection. Several cases of invasive carcinoma were encountered, 3 in very young women. However, there was no obvious age predilection for the various grades of CIN and for HPV lesions. This raises the question of whether or not HPVs in cervical cancer are chance associations rather than being actively involved in lesion information.