An Analysis of Seroepidemiological Studies of Herpesvirus Type 2 and Carcinoma of the Cervix1

There are 2 aspects of the Seroepidemiological studies of herpesvirus type 2 and cervical cancer that impose lim itations upon the interpretation of the data. One aspect is the antibody assay systems; the degree of accuracy with which the present assay systems detect past infections with herpesvirus type 2 is not known (27). The 2nd problem is the difficulty in controlling for the attributes of sexual be havior that appear to affect the risk of developing cervical cancer (9, 12, 17, 24). In most studies, the subjects have been considered positive or negative for antibodies to herpesvirus type 2 on the basis of criteria derived by various methods, and controls have been selected on the basis of race, age, and social level. However, in a few studies, an established criterion for the presence of type 2 antibodies in individual patients was not used and the data were analyzed according to the mean antibody titers of the study groups. In this review, the studies are presented ac cording to the method of data analysis: those in which designations of positive or negative for type 2 antibodies were assigned and those in which the mean antibody titers to type 1 and type 2 viruses were considered. Attention is then directed to the attempts to control for sexual and re production-associated factors.