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 HPV is transmitted during sexual activity. When the Canadian
province of British Columbia opted to vaccinate all teenage girls
against HPV, some parents were concerned this would lead to more
kids engaging in risky sexual behaviors.
But vaccinated girls may actually be less likely to start sex
younger, less likely to have more sexual partners, and less likely
to ignore safe-sex methods, the new study suggests.
"When we implemented the program over a decade ago, there were three
main concerns: Would the vaccine be effective? Would it be safe? And
might it influence sexual health choices?" said coauthor Dr. Gina
Ogilvie, a professor at the University of British Columbia and
senior public health scientist at the British Columbia Center for
Disease Control. "But the girls continued to make very safe sexual
health choices. In fact, they actually made better choices. So
parents can be reassured that the HPV vaccine does not lead young
girls to make poor sexual health choices."
HPV infections usually go away on their own, but sometimes they
persist and can cause certain cancers.
British Columbia introduced a publicly funded HPV vaccination
program in schools for girls in 2008. To look at the effects of the
program, Ogilvie and her colleagues pored through three sets of
British Columbia Adolescent Health Surveys taken by students in
grades seven through 12. Two surveys - the ones done in 2003 and
2008 - contained responses gathered prior to the HVP vaccination
program. Those responses were compared to answers in a 2013 survey,
five years after the program started.
As reported in CMAJ, 302,626 self-identified heterosexual girls were
included in the surveys. The percentage of girls who reported ever
having sex was 18.3 percent in 2013, down from 21.3 percent in 2003
and 20.6 percent in 2008. Moreover, the proportion of girls who said
they had intercourse before age 14 declined between 2008 and 2013,
from 13 percent to 10.2 percent, and the use of condoms increased
from 63.3 percent in 2008 to 68.9 percent in 2013.
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Though the study was done in Canada, its findings probably apply to
the U.S., too, said Dr. Anna-Barbara Moscicki, a professor of
pediatrics and chief of adolescent medicine at the University of
California, Los Angeles, David Geffen School of Medicine.
In fact, Moscicki said, "There is another recent paper showing in
the U.S. that vaccinated teens do not initiate sex more often."
Ogilvie wasn't willing to speculate on why girls seemed to be making
healthier sexual choices after the implementation of the HPV
vaccination program.
But it's entirely possible that doctors sometimes throw in some
education about sex when giving the vaccine, said Susan Rosenthal,
director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Health at NewYork-Presbyterian/
Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City.
"There's been pretty consistent evidence from the U.S. that when you
provide information about contraception and condoms, teens reduce
sexual risk-taking, delay sexual initiation and when they do have
sex, they use protection," Rosenthal said.
While it's not known if a bit of sex ed came with the HPV shots in
British Columbia, vaccination time can be a good opportunity to
start a conversation, Rosenthal said. "A lot of times parents and
others don't know how to bring the subject up," she added. "The HPV
vaccination potentially provides you an opening and an opportunity
to have a sex education conversation with families."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2q1Ae21 CMAJ, online October 15, 2018.
(This story has been refiled to fix the spelling of HPV in headline)
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