Even though her Pap tests had come back normal, McKinney's HPV test was positive.
The only approved HPV test on the market is for women, for use in cervical-cancer screening.
The HPV test can detect an active infection with one of the high-risk strains of the virus.
The HPV test resulted in more false-positives than the Pap test, it is not widely available yet and it may not be covered by insurance.
But the benefit of the new HPV test is that it tells you right away if you're infected with a virus that could cause the cancer.
It developed a method to rapidly screen the Pap samples for those mutations using standard genetics equipment that Diaz said wouldn't add much to the cost of a Pap-plus-HPV test.
Kaiser Permanente, a large HMO based in California, has found that giving both the Pap and the HPV test to women 30 and older helps detect more cases of precancerous disease.
Cervical polyps are typically removed only if they are large, causing irregular bleeding, or if there is an abnormal Pap smear or a persistently positive HPV (human papillomavirus) test.
The test for high risk HPV is done on the cervical screening sample, which means that women will not notice anything different when they have their regular cervical smear test.
Today, many women's Paps undergo an additional DNA-based test to see if they harbor the HPV virus, which can spur cervical cancer.
McKinney says she had heard about the HPV vaccine, but she had never heard about the test for the virus until a nurse handed her an informational brochure.
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