Clinical validation of the Roche cobas and cobas 4800 HPV tests on self-collected vaginal dry swabs vs practitioner-collected cervical specimens using the VALHUDES Protocol

The first national HPV-based cervical screening programs began in 2017. Since then, a growing list of countries have moved, or want to move, to HPV-based screening. One of the benefits of HPV-based screening is that a sample does not need to be collected from the cervix by a healthcare practitioner. Self-collection has been demonstrated to give equivalent accuracy as practitioner-collected specimens when a PCR-based clinically validated HPV assay is used. However, there are few clinically validated, PCR-based, HPV assays with on-label claims for self-collection.