HPV | World Tech Today

It is the only vaccine created specifically to prevent cancer, and it is nearly 100 percent effective, yet parent continue to resist adding the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to the requirements for school. Only one in five parents supports mandatory HPV vaccines even though the vaccine is nearly 100 percent effective in preventing cervical cancer, 95 percent effective against anal cancer and 70 percent effective against throat and neck cancer.

Interestingly enough, a recent study of parents’ attitudes toward the HPV vaccine found that support tripled if parents are given the opportunity to opt out for their child. Postdoctoral research associate at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and study lead author William Calo says that, even though support for the HPV vaccine increases with opt-out provisions, previous research has found that those provisions make the law less effective.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that about one in four people in the U.S. are currently infected with cancers caused by HPV infections, and approximately 14 million more, including teens, become infected every year. The infections cause vaginal, cervical and vulvar cancers in women, penile cancers in men, and throat cancer, anal cancer, and genital warts in both men and women.

According to Calo, the vaccine can save an estimated 30,000 lives every year, yet parents continue to resist, even though half believed it was at least as important as meningococcal and Tdap vaccines, which are the other two recommended for adolescents. Only 40 percent of parents believed the vaccine could prevent cervical cancer and almost one-fourth believed (inaccurately) that the vaccine might cause long-term health issues. Only 21 percent of parents thought that requiring the vaccine was a good idea. However, that figure jumped to 57 percent if the parents were allowed to opt out.

The CDC recommends that preteen girls and boys aged 11 or 12 receive the vaccine, which is given in three shots over a 6-month period. Teenagers can be vaccinated if they did not receive the shot at a younger age, men can be vaccinated up to age 21 and women up to age 26.

A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine has revealed that getting the Human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV) does not necessarily encourage young girls to be sexually careless. The study addresses a number of myths and fears that people have about HPV vaccination.

HPV vaccine was first produced in 2006, and according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, young kids aged 11-12 as well as older teens and young adults should get a series of three HPV vaccine shots.

The vaccination will safeguard them against contracting the common HPV strain that causes genital warts, cervical cancer, and other related diseases. However, these shots work best and are most effective when the teens getting them are not yet sexually active.

About 38% of girls and 14% of boys aged 13-17 had been fully vaccinated as at 2013 (this was the latest available figures); although boys just started to be vaccinated much later than girls.

According to a medical researcher at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Anupam Jena, almost 20% of parents surveyed in given polls believe that HPV shots would encourage young teens to start having sex or to engage in riskier sex behavior. The parents have reasons to believe that their children would develop “a false sense of security” as a result of their vaccine shots, believing it protects them against pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

Jena together with other researchers analyzed the insurance records of 21,610 girls aged 12-18 before and after their vaccinations; and they also studied the records of 186,501 unvaccinated girls, and tallied it with the first group according to ages and zip codes.

The researchers found that vaccinated girls had increased rates of herpes, gonorrhea, and Chlamydia among others in the first year before their shots; and according to Jena, this was likely because sexually active girls with experience of infections might be more motivated to get the shots. But for the years afterward, infections different from HPV increased in both groups, and Jena said this was likely because infections would rise with age as more teens get more sexually active.

“This is probably the most definitive evidence yet that vaccinating your child against HPV is unlikely to lead them to be more sexually active, at least in an unsafe way,” Jena said.

The study also finds that some doctors or physicians hesitate to recommend HPV vaccination to young girls because they fear giving “tacit approval for sexual activity,” wrote Robert Bednarczyk, an epidemiologist at Emory University in Atlanta.

“However, just as we do not wait until we have been in the sun for two hours to apply sunscreen, we should not wait until after an individual is sexually active to attempt to prevent HPV infection,” he wrote.

The Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit organization that investigates sexual health, discovered that about 2% of 12-year-olds, 20% of 15-year-olds, and 61% of 18-year-olds have had sex at least once.

However, Valerie Huber, the president and CEO of the National Abstinence Education Association stated that all sexual infection risks can be avoided be avoiding pre-marital sex. Huber said physicians should encourage teens about abstinence and not “merely encouraging a vaccine that, at best, only reduces the risk of a single STD.”

Source: HPV

HPV vaccine nearly 100 percent effective in preventing cancer, but parents continue to resist

Study finds HPV vaccines do not encourage risky sexual behaviors in girls