ArticleBMC cancer2026
Identification and validation of CNTNAP2/PAX1 hypermethylation as an epigenetic biomarker panel for detection of cervical cancer and precancerous lesions in hrHPV-positive women.
Article in BMC cancer, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundCervical cancer remains a significant global health burden, and effective triage strategies are urgently needed for high-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV)-positive women in screening programs. This study aimed to identify and validate DNA methylation markers for detecting cervical precancerous lesions in hrHPV-positive women.
methodsReduced representation bisulfite sequencing (RRBS) was performed on a discovery cohort (n = 17) to screen for differentially methylated candidate genes. Quantitative methylation-specific PCR (qMSP) was used to evaluate the performance of selected markers in an independent cohort of 347 hrHPV-positive women stratified into training (n = 154) and validation (n = 193) sets. Diagnostic accuracy was assessed using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve (AUC).
resultsAmong the candidates identified, CNTNAP2 and PAX1 methylation levels increased progressively with cervical disease severity (both P < 0.0001). In the independent validation set, the combined CNTNAP2/PAX1 panel achieved an AUC of 0.904 (95% CI: 0.853-0.942) for CIN2 + detection and 0.932 (95% CI: 0.887-0.963) for CIN3 + detection. The panel yielded a sensitivity of 73.8% and specificity of 95.5% for CIN2+, and a sensitivity of 89.2% and specificity of 87.8% for CIN3+. In comparison, HPV16/18 genotyping showed sensitivities of 54.1% for CIN2 + and 56.8% for CIN3+, with specificities of 81.1% and 76.3%, respectively. Cytology (≥ ASCUS) had higher sensitivity (CIN2+: 93.1%; CIN3+: 91.2%) but substantially lower specificity (CIN2+: 16.9%; CIN3+: 14.9%); notably, cytology specificity in this cohort was likely underestimated due to verification bias. The CNTNAP2/PAX1 panel outperformed both comparator methods in overall diagnostic accuracy.
conclusionsThe CNTNAP2/PAX1 methylation panel demonstrates robust diagnostic performance for detecting cervical precancerous lesions in hrHPV-positive women, supporting its potential utility as an objective and effective triage tool in hrHPV-based cervical cancer screening.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.