The vaccine for cancer-causing human papillomavirus may reduce the rate of oral HPV infections by more than 80 percent, according to a study recently presented in advance of the American Society of Clinical Oncology's 2017 Annual Meeting to be held in Chicago June 2-6.
The HPV vaccine is approved for the prevention of cervical, vulvar, vaginal and anal cancers in women and anal cancers in men. However, while 70 percent of cancers that affect the oropharynx area in the throat can be attributed to HPV, the vaccine is not approved for the prevention of such cancers due to a dearth of clinical evidence suggesting the vaccine would offer protection from oral strains of the virus associated with cancer.
To assess whether or not the vaccine may offer protection from oral HPV, researchers analyzed the results of a National Center for Health Statistics survey conducted from 2011 to 2014. The research team analyzed responses from 2,627 adults between 18 and 33 years old.
Approximately 18.3 percent of the young adults surveyed reported receiving one or more doses of the HPV vaccine by age 26, with 29.2 percent of women and 6.9 percent of men reporting vaccination, respectively. Those immunized against HPV were found to be 88 percent less likely to contract oral HPV infections. When evaluating men exclusively, the HPV vaccine proved even more efficacious.
"When we compared the prevalence [of oral HPV] in vaccinated men to non-vaccinated men, we didn't detect any infections in vaccinated men. The data suggests that the vaccine may be reducing the prevalence of those infections by as [much] as 100 percent," said Maura Gillison, MD, PhD, professor of thoracic/head and neck medical oncology at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and the study's presenter.
Researchers used their analysis to create national estimates and discovered that "just under 1 million people would have HPV infections in this age group, but, unfortunately, because of low-uptake of the vaccine, the burden of infection had only been reduced by 17 percent overall, and only seven percent in men. We hope the burden of infection will decrease over time with increased vaccination," added Dr. Gillison.
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