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 HPV is among the most common sexually transmitted diseases. Most
infections don't cause symptoms and go away on their own, but the
virus can cause cancers of the cervix, penis and throat.
While the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention recommends
routine HPV vaccination for girls and boys starting at age 11, less
than half of girls and even fewer boys are fully vaccinated against
the virus, researchers write in Pediatrics. Currently, 23 states and
the District of Columbia have passed legislation designed to boost
vaccination rates by providing HPV education in schools, requiring
insurers to provide low-cost or free shots and making vaccination
mandatory, the study authors note.
These policies have been controversial, and vaccination rates remain
stubbornly low, at least in part because some parents worry that
giving children the HPV vaccine will encourage them to have sex too
soon or without condoms.
The current study results should put these concerns to rest, said
lead author Erin Cook, who completed the research at the Harvard T.H.
Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
"Parents should not be concerned about legislative policies
regarding HPV that have been passed so far influencing teen sexual
behaviors," Cook said by email.
For the study, researchers examined survey data collected from
886,981 high school students across the country from 2001 to 2015.
Overall, roughly one in four of the teens surveyed reported having
sex at least once in the previous three months. And, 97 percent of
these sexually active teens said they used condoms the last time
they had sex.
To see if HPV vaccination laws might impact teens' behavior,
researchers compared the proportion of teens having sex and using
condoms after these laws were passed in their states to what
happened beforehand. They also looked at trends in states without
any HPV vaccine laws on the books.
Across all states, the proportion of teens who said they were
sexually active decreased slightly after 2007 when the HPV vaccine
first became widely available, the study found.
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The proportion of students having sex and using condoms was similar
for states with and without HPV legislation. Moreover, there was no
difference in risky sexual behavior between states with and without
vaccine laws.
Parents should still be reassured that the study adds to growing
evidence that the vaccine won't encourage teens to start having sex
or stop using condoms.
"Getting vaccinated won't make them more prone to be more sexually
active," Breuner said. "The HPV vaccine prevents a life-threatening
disease!"
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2MlZdK8 Pediatrics, online August 13, 2018.
It's possible this might be due to the limited scope of HPV
legislation in some states, researchers note. In some places,
parents can opt out of vaccination mandates, for example, and in
other instances legislation provides only for education about HPV
and the vaccine.
"At this time states require consent from parents for this vaccine,"
said Dr. Cora Collette Breuner, a professor of pediatrics and
adolescent medicine at the University of Washington and Seattle
Children's Hospital.
"If we could ask teens if they didn't want to get cancer later in
life, they would most likely say 'no I don't want to get cancer,'"
Breuner, who wasn't involved in the study, said by email.
However, the study wasn't a controlled experiment designed to prove
whether or how HPV vaccination laws, or getting vaccinated, might
directly impact teens' sexual behavior.
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