Cervical cancer screening abnormalities in immunosuppressed renal transplant women: case-control study in Southern Brazil.

PURPOSE: To evaluate the prevalence of cervical pre-malignancies in the cervical cytology of female renal transplant recipients (RTR) and compare to immunocompetent patients.

METHODS

A prospective case-control study of 165 RTR (cases) and 372 immunocompetent women (controls) was carried out from May 2015 to August 2016. The participants completed a questionnaire with demographic characteristics, habits, reproductive history, and information about the renal transplant. Cervical cytology samples were collected at their visit for cervical cancer screening. Relevant medical history was obtained from medical records and previous cervical cytology results were retrieved: from the time of kidney transplantation to the beginning of this study for RTR and all collected throughout life for controls.

RESULTS

The mean age was similar between groups (42.6 ± 11.4 vs. 41.8.2 ± 11.1 years, p = 0.447). Considering cervical cytology collected since the kidney transplant, RTR had three times higher rates of abnormal cervical cytology test (24.8% of RTR vs. 6.3% for controls), and the abnormalities were more frequent (p < 0.001) for low squamous intraepithelial lesion (LSIL) (n = 23, 13.9%) and high squamous intraepithelial lesion (HSIL) (n = 9, 5.5%). Cervical cytology collected during the study had normal results in 152 RTR (92.1%) vs. 326 controls (93.9%) (p > 0.05). When the altered results were broken down, a higher frequency of LSIL could be seen in RTR (3.6% vs 0.0%, p = 0.008).

CONCLUSION

RTR had significantly higher rates of cervical cytology abnormalities comparing to the control group and most of it was composed of LSIL.