HPV vaccines are so effective that new screening policies may be in order, suggests study
HPV vaccines work so well in preventing cancers caused by the virus that it may be time to review screening guidelines, according to the somewhat provocative conclusion of a new…
Vaccines work well to prevent cancers caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV). So well, in fact, that it may be time to review HPV screening protocols, according to the somewhat provocative conclusion of a new study examining the occurrence of genital HPV types eight years after immunization, published Wednesday in Cell Host & Microbe.
The randomized controlled study included more than 60,000 women from 33 Finnish communities born in 1992, 1993, and 1994. The study randomly divided them into three groups based on their cities’ HPV vaccination strategies: gender-neutral HPV vaccination, girls-only vaccination, and no vaccination. The researchers then followed up four and eight years after the vaccination to test for 16 types of genital HPV — HPV 16/18/31/45, the high-oncogenic types, and 12 other types carrying lower cancer risk.
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