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Abstract
Australia's transition to primary human papillomavirus (HPV) based cervical screening,
has for the first time, provided a passive mechanism for monitoring the impact of
vaccination on infection prevalence among women attending screening. We assessed oncogenic
HPV prevalence by single year of age in the first 7 months of the program, using
data collected from a large screening laboratory in Victoria, Australia, which is
routinely screening using cobas 4800, cobas 6800 and Seegene assays. Among 116,052
primary screening samples from women aged 25-74, 9.25% (95%CI: 9.09-9.42%) had oncogenic
HPV detected: 2.14% (95%CI: 2.05-2.22%) were 16/18 positive and 7.12% (95%CI: 6.97-7.27%)
were positive for only non-16/18 HPV. Prevalence peaked at age 25-29 then decreased
with age, but this was driven by non-16/18 types. HPV16/18 prevalence remained low
and flat across ages, contrasting with pre-vaccination epidemiology when HPV16/18
peaked in young women. HPV-based screening can precisely monitor HPV prevalence.