The Detection of Urinal Neopterin Concentration Increases the Efficiency of Cervical Smear in the Diagnosis of Cervical Cancer

Abstract

Summary: Objective: To investigate the importance of urinal neopterin detection carried out together with cervical smear test, in the diagnosis of cervical cancer. Methods: In this study, urine samples were collected from randomly selected vulvovaginitis’ women who attended hospital and an independent control group. The participants were classified into two representative sample groups and a control group; 1st Group: 35 women with vulvovaginitis, whose ages varied fro 21 to 42 and who had no viral infections, and chronic inflammatory diseases and no smoking habit, but had complaints of vaginal discharge. 2nd Group: 25 women aged between 38–52 with no smoking habit, who applied to hospital with complaints of vaginal discharge, and cervical cancer was diagnosed for them as the result of biopsy, but no associated treatment of cancer had been carried out yet. 3rd Group: A control group with 30 women who aged between 20 and 28, with no smoking habit, and who had not taken part in sexual activities yet. They had no complaints from any type of tumors, and viral infections or chronic inflammatory diseases. Urinalysis was carried out for each group member’s urine sample in order to measure the level of neopterin. Neopterin was estimated by HPLC. Some statistical analyses were done by SPSS Windows 10.0 and were analyzed by Oneway Annova test. (p=0.000) Meaningful differences between the groups were determined by Post Hoc Tukey Test. Results: The mathematical results of neopterin levels for the groups revealed that the level of Group 1 was significantly higher than the level of Group 3 (p= 0.0001). When the levels of Group 1 and 2 were compared with each other, a significant difference was determined (p=0.004). Also, the difference in the levels of Group 2 and 3 was found to be significant (p=0.0001). Conclusions: If the results of this study were not confounded by another factor, then we can deduce that an increment in the level of neopterin may be considered as a risk factor that should warrant further investigation of cervical cancer. Then, the detection of urinal neopterin level as a noninvasive test done together with cervical smear can increase the sensitivity of smear test.

Keywords

• Cervical cancer
• Neopterin
• Efficiency
• Risk factor