2025 · Spectrochimica acta. Part A, Molecular and biomolecular spectroscopy · paywalled
Smartphone-based urine colourimetric assay for home self-screening of HPV infection
Zhang et al.
The finding, in our words
A smartphone based colourimetric assay that detects a metabolic byproduct of HPV infected cells in urine achieved sensitivity and specificity comparable to nucleic acid detection, offering a low cost, user friendly option for home self screening of HPV.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
This study found strong agreement between self-collected urine samples tested with the INDICAID HPV assay and clinician-collected swabs tested with the BD Onclarity assay for detecting high-risk HPV. The results suggest that urine-based self-collection offers a reliable alternative for cervical cancer screening, potentially improving access for women who face barriers to standard care.
Self-collected urine samples matched clinician-collected cervical samples in detecting all seven CIN3 lesions among hrHPV-positive women when extended HPV typing was used, showing 82% concordance for hrHPV detection. This indicates urine self-collection could serve as a patient-centric, decentralised screening option for cervical precancer without compromising diagnostic yield.
Urine testing for high-risk HPV achieved 86.2% sensitivity for detecting high-grade cervical lesions, slightly below the 94.8% sensitivity of cervical samples, while patient satisfaction was significantly higher with self-collected urine. High agreement for HPV 16/18 genotypes between the two methods supports urine as a viable alternative for decentralised cervical screening.
Urine self-sampling for HPV detection showed good agreement with clinician-collected cervical samples (Kappa 0.72) under optimised conditions of 40 mM EDTA preservative, storage at 25°C, and processing within 72 hours. With a cost of USD 1.10 and high acceptability among women and healthcare workers, this method offers a practical decentralised screening approach for resource-limited settings.
In women with HPV, first-void urine collected with the Colli-Pee device had higher HPV DNA concentrations than urine collected with a standard cup, although this advantage disappeared at high HPV DNA loads. Timing of collection (morning versus later) did not affect HPV DNA copies.