This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Ralph M. Richart, MD
The Sloane Hospital for Women New York

JAMA. 1986;255(1):36-37.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

With regard to the article entitled "Increased Incidence of Cervical and Vaginal Dysplasia in 3,980 Diethylstilbestrol-Exposed Young Women" by Robboy et al,¹ I wish to point out that the data may have a bias that makes them difficult to interpret. I believe the conclusion that there is an increased incidence of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) in diethylstilbestrol (DES)-exposed women may be unwarranted.

As we have pointed out previously² the metaplastic epithelium in DES-exposed women is more commonly cytologically atypical than in non-DES-exposed women, and it is frequently overdiagnosed as CIN. In addition, when the human papilloma virus (HPV) infects a metaplastic epithelium, it commonly produces the appearance of high-grade CIN and leads to erroneous diagnoses.³ It is now generally agreed⁴ that HPV is usually, and possibly always, present in cervical squamous cell cancers and their precursors and that it may be difficult for . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?