Can bacterial Vaginosis cause an abnormal pap test?
Monday, October 12th, 2009 at
5:02 pm
can it cause abnormal squamous epithelial cells?
Filed under: Bacterial Vaginosis Causes
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You probably got a diagnosis of ASCUS, or atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance. Usually when a Pap smear comes back with these results they will do a test for HPV on the sample. If the result is ASCUS with HPV negative, it is considered not especially worrisome and the usual recommendation is a followup Pap smear no more than a year later. If the result is ASCUS and HPV positive your doctor will usually want to followup with at least a Pap smear at 6 months, and potentially with more in-depth workup.
Pap smears look for precancerous cells, and verging on 100% (possibly exactly 100%) of cases of cervical cancer are caused by an infection with high-risk HPV. If you test negative for HPV, the changes are probably not precancerous and likely due to more benign causes such as inflammation, which could potentially be due to a genital infection. It is currently unclear whether bacterial vaginosis can contribute to ASCUS, with some saying yes and some no. In any case, Pap smears returning ASCUS should be followed up on, but are not cause for great worry.
absolutely not. bacterial vaginosis is caused by a bacteria, squamous cells are caused by something else.
yes, bacterial vaginosis cases an inadequate test, meaning that the presence of bacteria made the test unreliable, but that doesn’t mean that there are abnormal squamous cells, it just means you have to treat the infection and get the pap smear done again