WEDNESDAY, June 11, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Women will flock to an HPV test they can perform at home in private, a new study indicates.

Cervical cancer screening more than doubled when women were offered a mail-in self-collection test for human papillomavirus (HPV), researchers reported June 6 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Virtually all cervical cancer is caused by HPV, according to the National Cancer Institute.

"These results show that self-collection testing could be a solution to increasing access to screening and, in turn, reducing the burden of cervical cancer in the U.S.,” lead researcher Jane Montealegre said in a news release. She's an associate professor of behavioral science at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Around 11,500 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year, according to an editorial accompanying the new study. More than half have never been screened for HPV, or only screened infrequently.

Clinic-based screening is conducted most often via a pelvic exam, which can make some women uncomfortable or distressed, the editorial noted. Women also must make time for such screenings, and find a way to get to the clinic.

The first at-home screening test for cervical cancer received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval last month, researchers said in background notes. The test is expected to be available for clinical use within the next few months.

To see how this test might fare in the real world, researchers approached nearly 2,500 women ages 30 to 65 from the Houston area between February 2020 and August 2023.

They randomly communicated with these women in one of three ways by phone. The women were either reminded to come to a medical clinic for cervical cancer screening, offered a mailed self-collection test kit, or provided a mailed self-collection test with a follow-up call if their kit wasn’t promptly returned.

Women were more than twice as likely to participate in cervical cancer screening if they were offered an at-home test kit, researchers found.

About 41% of those who received an at-home kit participated in cervical cancer screening, compared with just 17% of those who received only a phone reminder to come to a clinic, results show.

And when women sent a test kit also received follow-up reminders from a patient navigator, participation rose to 47%.

All told, more than 80% of women in the test kit groups who participated in cervical cancer screening did so by mailing their kit in for analysis, researchers found. The rest chose to go to a clinic and receive usual screening.

Of the women who returned a kit, about 13% tested positive for a high-risk type of HPV, the study says.

“As self-collection tests become available in the U.S., it’s vital that we gather data to guide how they are rolled out,” Montealegre said, stressing the importance of making them available in clinics and health centers that care for people who have the greatest barriers to health care.

"By removing barriers, we are hopeful that we can improve the uptake of evidence-based screening tests and make significant progress against this preventable disease,” she said.

Researchers next plan to study how to integrate HPV self-collection tests in different primary care settings.

“Home-based HPV testing now represents an implementation challenge, to ensure it can be adopted into clinical use in a safe and effective manner,” wrote the editorial team led by Dr. Eve Rittenberg, a women's health specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “In particular, it is unclear how clinicians and health systems can best deliver timely follow-up testing and treatment of abnormal results.”

More information

The National Cervical Cancer Coalition has more about HPV self-collection testing.

SOURCE: University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, news release, June 6, 2025