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The big health story this morning is from the findings, published in @TheLancet, that HPV vaccination has significantly cut rates of cervical cancer-causing infections in countries with a vaccination programme newscientist.com/article/220772…
That’s the conclusion of a review of 65 studies across 14 high-income countries, including 60 million people, over 8 years that found “strong evidence that HPV vaccination works to prevent cervical cancer in real-world settings”
A team @universiteLaval found that, 5-8 years into a vaccination programme, the prevalence of two strains of HPV that the vaccine protects against fell 83% among teenage girls and 66% in women aged 20-24. It also dropped 37% in women aged 25-29, even though most were unvaccinated
HPV vaccination also lowers the rate of precancerous lesions and genital warts in girls and women. This suggests that vaccinating girls and young women can protect boys and men too, thanks to herd immunity, the researchers say
In the UK it's expected that 12-13-year-old boys will also become eligible for the HPV vaccine from September. Here’s our analysis of why that’s good science newscientist.com/article/214136…
Other countries with vaccination programmes are lowering the rate of virus infection. In Scotland, HPV vaccination has been linked to the ‘near elimination' of cervical cancer newscientist.com/article/219881…
Australia is on track to become the first country to practically eradicate cervical cancer newscientist.com/article/216290…
And in the US the HPV vaccine has halved cervical cancer-causing HPV infections in teen girls newscientist.com/article/207826…
There’s more from @newscientist on vaccines here newscientist.com/article-topic/…
