In a new study, researchers found that women vaccinated against HPV have a much lower risk of developing cervical cancer, and the positive effect is most pronounced for women vaccinated at a young age.
The research was conducted by a team at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.
HPV (human papillomavirus) is a group of viruses that commonly causes genital warts and different types of cancer, including cervical cancer, a disease that globally kills more than 250,000 women a year.
More than 100 countries have implemented national vaccination programs against HPV, and Sweden as of August 2020 also includes boys in this program.
Previous studies have shown that the HPV vaccine protects against HPV infection, genital warts, and precancerous cervical lesions that could develop into cancer of the cervix.
However, there is a lack of large population-based studies that on an individual level have studied the link between the HPV vaccine and so-called invasive cervical cancer, which is the most severe form of the disease.
In this study, the researchers during a period of 11 years followed almost 1.7 million women between the ages of 10 and 30.
Of those women, more than 500,000 were vaccinated against HPV, the majority before the age of 17.
Nineteen vaccinated women were diagnosed with cervical cancer compared to 538 unvaccinated women, corresponding to 47 and 94 women per 100,000, respectively.
The researchers found that HPV vaccination was linked to a much-reduced risk of cervical cancer and that girls vaccinated before age 17 reduced their risk of cervical cancer by 88%.
Women vaccinated between ages 17 and 30 halved their risk of cervical cancer compared to unvaccinated women.
The team says girls vaccinated at a young age seem to be more protected, probably because they are less likely to have been exposed to HPV infection and given that HPV vaccination has no therapeutic effect against a pre-existing infection.
In conclusion, this study shows that HPV vaccination may strongly reduce the risk of cervical cancer, especially if completed at an early age.
One author of the study is Jiayao Lei, a researcher at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics.
The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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