Impact of Cryotherapy Versus Loop Electrosurgical Excision Procedure (LEEP) on Recurrence of Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia and HIV-1 Cervical Shedding Among HIV-positive Women

The recent scale-up of antiretroviral treatment programs in resource-limited settings provides an unprecedented opportunity to implement a comprehensive cervical cancer screening and treatment program for women who, by virtue of having HIV, are at significant risk for cervical disease. Unfortunately, even if screening is offered free of charge to millions of women living with HIV, it is unclear which treatment modality for pre-cancerous cervical lesions will be most effective since HIV appears to affect outcomes of treatment by increasing the recurrence and severity of cervical disease. Cervical treatment may also increase shedding of HIV from the cervix which may put discordant couples at risk and possibly spread HIV more widely. This study proposes to randomize HIV-positive women with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2 and 3 (CIN 2 and 3) to cryotherapy vs. loop electrosurgical excision procedure (LEEP) and measure the recurrence of cervical disease in each group over 2-years of follow-up as well as HIV shedding from the cervix for 6 weeks after treatment.

Our hypothesis is that compared to cryotherapy, LEEP is significantly more likely to prevent recurrence of cervical lesions over 2 years of follow-up and less likely to cause shedding of HIV-1 from the cervix over 3 weeks of follow-up.