About half of U.S. adolescents were up to date on HPV vaccination in 2018, marking a slight increase from the year prior, according to the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published Aug. 23.
CDC researchers examined data on 18,700 adolescents ages 13 to 17 from the 2018 National Immunization Survey. They found 51.1 percent of adolescents were up to date on the HPV vaccine series, up from 48.6 percent in 2017.
Vaccination among adolescent boys largely drove this increase. This group's vaccination rate jumped from 44.3 percent in 2017 to 48.7 percent in 2018.
On average, about 34,800 HPV-related cancer cases are reported in the U.S. annually. Of these, 92 percent are linked to a type of HPV the vaccine protects against, according to a separate CDC report.
Access the CDC's full reports here and here.