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 Presenting results of an international analysis covering 60 million
people in high-income countries, scientists from Britain and Canada
said they found "strong evidence" that vaccination against the human
papillomavirus (HPV) works "to prevent cervical cancer in real-world
settings".
"We're seeing everything that we'd want to see. We're seeing
reductions in the key HPV infections that cause most cervical
disease, and we're seeing reductions in cervical disease," said
David Mesher, principal scientist at Public Health England, who
worked on the research team.
Marc Brisson, a specialist in infectious disease health economics at
Canada's Laval University who co-led the study, said the results
suggested "we should be seeing substantial reductions in cervical
cancer in the next 10 years."
HPV vaccines were first licensed in 2007 and have since then been
adopted in at least 100 countries worldwide. Britain’s GSK makes an
HPV vaccine called Cervarix, which targets two strains of the virus,
while Merck makes a rival shot, Gardasil, which targets nine
strains.
In countries with HPV immunization programmes, the vaccines are
usually offered to girls before they become sexually active to
protect against cervical and other HPV-related cancers.
Brisson's team gathered data on 60 million people over eight years
from 65 separate studies conducted in 14 countries and pooled it to
assess the vaccines' impact.
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They found that the two HPV types that cause 70% of cervical cancers
- known as HPV 16 and HPV 18 - were significantly reduced after
vaccination, with an 83% decline in infections in girls aged 13 to
19 and 66% drop in women aged 20 to 24 after five to eight years of
vaccination.
Figures released in February by the World Health Organization’s
International Agency for Research on Cancer showed an estimated
570,000 new cases of cervical cancer were diagnosed worldwide in
2018, making it the fourth most common cancer in women globally.
Each year, more than 310,000 women die from cervical cancer, the
vast majority of them in poorer countries where HPV immunization
coverage is low or non-existent.
Brisson urged governments in the most-affected countries to take
note: "Our results show the vaccines are working - so I hope in the
upcoming years we will ...see rates of HPV vaccination increase in
countries that need it most," he said.
(Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
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