Nancy Lapid
(Reuters) – Vaccinating boys and men against the human papillomavirus (HPV) reduces the risk of head and neck cancer and other cancers, a new analysis shows, adding to the vaccine’s proven benefit in protecting women against cervical cancer.
The study of more than 3.4 million people is one of the first long-term analyzes of the vaccine’s true impact on preventing HPV-related head and neck, anal, penile, vulvar, vaginal and cervical cancers, the researchers said.
Previous vaccine studies have focused primarily on cervical cancer. For example, in one large study conducted in Sweden in 2020, the rate of cervical cancer was 47 per 100,000 in vaccinated women and 94 per 100,000 in unvaccinated women.
The new study, scheduled to be presented at the upcoming meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago, involved more than 1.7 million volunteers who were vaccinated against HPV since 2010, at some point between the ages of 9 and 39, and approximately the same number of unvaccinated volunteers. . About 44% were men.
The study found that vaccinated men had lower rates of any HPV-related cancer and head and neck cancer (3.4 and 2.8 cases, respectively, per 100,000 vaccinated patients, compared with 7.5 and 6.3, respectively per 100,000 unvaccinated patients).
Smoking used to be the leading cause of many head and neck cancers, such as mouth and throat cancer, but today the leading cause is HPV infection, ASCO President Dr. Lynn Schuchter said at a press briefing Thursday. Schucter was not involved in the study.
The new study “expands what we know” and shows that preventing infection with the vaccine helps prevent additional HPV-related cancers, she added.
Vaccinated women had a lower risk of developing HPV-related cancers in the study and, as expected, a lower risk of cervical cancer compared with unvaccinated women.
Vaccination did not significantly reduce the risk of head and neck cancer, or cancer of the vulva or vagina.
Merck’s HPV vaccine was approved in 2006 for girls and women ages 9 to 26, and in 2009 for boys and men in that age group. The most recent version, Gardasil 9, has been approved in the United States since 2018 for use in children and adults aged 9 to 45 years.
A separate study to be presented at the ASCO meeting found that between 2011 and March 2020, HPV vaccine uptake in the United States rose from 23.3% to 43.0% among the eligible population, improving from 7.8% to 36 .4% among men and from 37.7% to 49.4% among women.