Agreement and Diagnostic Performance of Urinary HPV Testing Versus Clinician-Collected Cervico-Vaginal Sampling: A Prospective Cross-Sectional Study in a Romanian Cohort.

Background

Cervical cancer screening uptake in Romania remains below 20%, with invasive sampling cited as a major participation barrier. Urinary HPV testing is a non-invasive alternative, but data from Eastern European populations are scarce and reporting stratified by histological grade is inconsistent.

Objectives

To evaluate the agreement between paired urinary and clinician-collected cervico-vaginal HPV testing, and to assess the diagnostic performance of urinary HPV testing for biopsy-confirmed cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2 or worse (CIN2+).

Methods

Prospective cross-sectional study in three outpatient obstetrics and gynecology clinics (May 2025-May 2026). A total of 230 women aged 25-70 years provided paired cervico-vaginal (PreservCyt®) and first-void urine (Colli-Pee®) specimens. To capture the full spectrum of disease probability, participants were recruited across three clinical scenarios: primary screening, cytology triage and HPV-positive triage. A multiplex RT-PCR assay targeted a total of 14 high-risk HPV genotypes, providing separate identification for HPV16 and HPV18, alongside a pooled detection for the remaining 12 high-risk strains. Colposcopy-guided cervical biopsy served as the reference standard.

Results

Paired hrHPV testing achieved substantial agreement (κ = 0.696, 95% CI 0.604-0.788), with higher genotype-specific concordance for HPV16 (κ = 0.755) and HPV18 (κ = 0.789). Discordance was directionally asymmetric (30 cervical-positive/urine-negative versus 4 urine-positive/cervical-negative; McNemar p < 0.001). For biopsy-confirmed CIN2+ (59 of 230; 25.7%), urinary hrHPV showed a sensitivity of 86.4% (95% CI 75.5-93.0), specificity 56.7%, positive predictive value 40.8% and negative predictive value 92.4%, compared with 91.5%, 43.3%, 35.8% and 93.7% for cervico-vaginal testing. Urinary HPV positivity increased monotonically with histological severity (25.0% no-lesion, 69.0% CIN1, 86.4% CIN2+; linear-by-linear p < 0.001).

Conclusions

Urinary HPV testing demonstrates substantial agreement with clinician-collected sampling, near-equivalent negative predictive value, and a robust dose-response with histological severity. It is a clinically credible non-invasive entry point for a triage cascade in settings such as Romania, where low participation rather than analytical performance is the principal screening barrier.