Aug. 19, 2024 – The term “Pap smear” makes many women cringe. The potentially life-saving cervical cancer screening can be painful, and nearly 1 in 4 women don’t get screened as often as they should, if at all.
But the FDA is currently reviewing an at-home screening test under its fast-track program that would involve a simple vaginal sample collection. The federal agency could make its decision about the at-home test as early as next year, The New York Times reported.
Later this year, women in the U.S. will likely be able to benefit from some of the technology involved in at-home tests and simply swab themselves at the doctor’s office or clinic to collect a cervical cancer screening sample.
Similar tests that involve self-collection are already in use in other parts of the world, such as Europe and Australia.
In Canada, people can simply fill out an online questionnaire to see if they are eligible to have a self-screening kit mailed to their home.
The key to the self-collection and at-home options is that samples from the vagina, rather than the much deeper cervix, can now be analyzed. For a Pap smear, a medical professional inserts a speculum into the vagina to widen it and then a brush that is often more than 7 inches in length is inserted to collect a sample. The swabs used for self-administered vaginal tests are similar to those used for COVID testing and inserted about 3 inches.
Currently, women ages 21 to 65 are advised to be screened for cervical cancer every 3 to 5 years using one or both of two methods. The Pap test involves collecting a sample from the cervix that is examined to detect abnormal cells. Another screening procedure is the HPV test, which can detect infection with human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is responsible for nearly all cases of cervical cancer, and specialized testing can detect whether a person is infected with any of the strains that are considered high risk.
In May, the FDA approved HPV self-collection kits in the U.S. to be used in health care settings, making it possible for women to swab their own vaginas to collect samples. Those kits should begin shipping to medical facilities this fall, the Times reported.
There are 11,500 new cervical cancer cases annually in the U.S., and 4,000 women die from the disease each year. It is considered highly preventable due to the capability to detect treatable precancerous conditions. But 23% of women were overdue for screening, according to 2019 data from the National Cancer Institute. That’s up from a rate of 14% overdue in 2005.
An analysis published in JAMA Network Open in 2022 showed that Asian and Hispanic women were more likely than white women to be overdue for screening, as well as people without insurance, who lived in rural places, or who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, other, or unsure (LGBQ+).
A federal program offers free or very low cost breast and cervical cancer screenings for women who have low incomes or have insurance barriers, such as being uninsured or underinsured.
