Cigarette smoking and high‐risk HPV DNA as predisposing factors for high‐grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) in young Brazilian women

Abstract

The results indicate that the severity of CIN lesions was clearly related to two fundamental risk factors: 1) high-risk HPV types, and 2) current cigarette smoking. These two risk factors were closely interrelated in that the high-risk HPV types were significantly more frequent in current smokers than in non-smokers, suggesting the possibility of a synergistic action between these two risk factors in cervical carcinogenesis.