Comparison of the Cobas 4800 Human Papillomavirus test against a combination of the Amplicor Human Papillomavirus and the Linear Array tests for detection of HPV types 16 and 18 in cervical samples

The greater prevalence of human papillomavirus (HPV) types 16 and 18 compared to the other high-risk HPV types of cervical cancer led to the development of clinical tests that detect both types separately from other genotypes. One method is the Roche Cobas 4800 HPV test, which is based on a real-time PCR. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of the Cobas 4800 HPV test for detecting genotypes 16 and 18 by comparing the results with those obtained in a combination of the Roche Amplicor HPV assay and the Roche Linear Array (LA) HPV genotyping assay. Excellent concordance was found between both methods (92.7%, kappa value=0.872). The Cobas 4800 HPV test could be used as a single test for identifying HPV types 16 and 18 directly from clinical specimens.