João Soares da Costa Neto

Human papillomavirus infection is the cause of several diseases in men and women. More than 100 types of HPV are known and about 30 are related to anogenital infection, with the most prevalent sexually transmitted viral infection worldwide. Given the proposal, the work aims to conduct a systematic review on the diagnosis of HPV in men. The study is a systematic review with the research question 'How is HPV diagnosed in men?' To answer this question, the descriptors “HPV OR papillomavirus” AND “diagnostic” and “man OR men” were used, in the PubMed, ScienceDirect and SciELO databases. After extracting the articles from the three databases and applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 26 articles was reached at the end. Within the review, the most used methods for screening male HPV were seen, such as: peniscopy, cytological and histological evaluation, serological tests, p16 immunohistochemistry and molecular tests that are of great importance in the conclusive diagnosis, being reported in 14 articles. The genotype most found in the articles was HPV 16, a high-risk type of HPV, being mentioned in 11 studies. In addition, ten diseases were associated with HPV infection such as: cancer or anal dysplasia, head and neck cancer, penile cancer, co-infections with more than one HPV genotype and with HIV virus. This study was limited due to the lack of methodological standardization of the papers used. Although the prevalence of HPV infection in men is high, there is no consensus on which tests should be used to establish a diagnosis. The different methodologies have different sensitivity and specificity values, thus, the diagnosis of male HPV infection tends to associate the available methods.