info on HPV
Cervical cancer virus is common in the US
21:00 27 February 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Roxanne Khamsi
The survey found that around a quarter of teenage girls and half of women in their early 20s carry the virus.
Doctors say that the new findings show that HPV infection is common and that there is a need to vaccinate young girls against high-risk strains of the virus. But some campaigners argue that vaccination should not be encouraged for all girls because it only protects against a small subset of HPV strains.
Telltale DNA
Eileen Dunne of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, US, and colleagues analysed self-collected vaginal swabs from roughly 2000 women aged between 14 and 59 years. They tested for HPV infection by analysing DNA in the swab samples, looking for genes that belong to the virus.
About 27% of the women tested positive for HPV infection, which equates to around 25 million women in the US, the team says.
More than 2% of the participants tested positive for HPV 16, HPV 18, or both, two strains of the virus known to cause cervical cancer. High-risk strains of HPV are found in 99% of women with the disease.
Dunne’s group also found that around 1% of the women had HPV 6 and/or HPV 11, which are known to cause genital warts.
In 2006, the CDC’s advisory committee on immunisation provisionally recommended the HPV vaccine Gardasil - which protects against types 6, 11, 16 and 18 - for all girls aged 11 or 12.
Kevin Ault of Emory University in Atlanta, who has conducted clinical trials of the vaccine, notes that only 4% of the participants in Dunne’s study already carried one of the four types of HPV that the vaccine protects against. “To me that means that 96% of the women might benefit from the vaccine,” says Ault.
The fact that nearly a quarter of girls between the ages of 14 and 19 years tested positive for HPV “shows how important it is to vaccinate people early”, says Rachel Winer of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, US.
Natural defences
But opponents of mandatory HPV vaccination programmes for US schoolgirls say that the new findings do not demonstrate that they are needed.
The body naturally clears most HPV infections on its own, including types 16 and 18, says Dawn Richardson, president of Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education, based in Austin, Texas. The parent group recently held a demonstration against attempts to make the vaccine mandatory for schoolgirls aged 11 and 12 years in the state.
Richardson adds that Gardasil only protects against two of the HPV types that can cause cervical cancer, which means that girls who receive the jab are still vulnerable to other high-risk types of the virus that cause these tumours.
Journal reference: Journal of the American Medical Association (vol 297, p 813-819
21:00 27 February 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Roxanne Khamsi
The survey found that around a quarter of teenage girls and half of women in their early 20s carry the virus.
Doctors say that the new findings show that HPV infection is common and that there is a need to vaccinate young girls against high-risk strains of the virus. But some campaigners argue that vaccination should not be encouraged for all girls because it only protects against a small subset of HPV strains.
Telltale DNA
Eileen Dunne of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, US, and colleagues analysed self-collected vaginal swabs from roughly 2000 women aged between 14 and 59 years. They tested for HPV infection by analysing DNA in the swab samples, looking for genes that belong to the virus.
About 27% of the women tested positive for HPV infection, which equates to around 25 million women in the US, the team says.
More than 2% of the participants tested positive for HPV 16, HPV 18, or both, two strains of the virus known to cause cervical cancer. High-risk strains of HPV are found in 99% of women with the disease.
Dunne’s group also found that around 1% of the women had HPV 6 and/or HPV 11, which are known to cause genital warts.
In 2006, the CDC’s advisory committee on immunisation provisionally recommended the HPV vaccine Gardasil - which protects against types 6, 11, 16 and 18 - for all girls aged 11 or 12.
Kevin Ault of Emory University in Atlanta, who has conducted clinical trials of the vaccine, notes that only 4% of the participants in Dunne’s study already carried one of the four types of HPV that the vaccine protects against. “To me that means that 96% of the women might benefit from the vaccine,” says Ault.
The fact that nearly a quarter of girls between the ages of 14 and 19 years tested positive for HPV “shows how important it is to vaccinate people early”, says Rachel Winer of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, US.
Natural defences
But opponents of mandatory HPV vaccination programmes for US schoolgirls say that the new findings do not demonstrate that they are needed.
The body naturally clears most HPV infections on its own, including types 16 and 18, says Dawn Richardson, president of Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education, based in Austin, Texas. The parent group recently held a demonstration against attempts to make the vaccine mandatory for schoolgirls aged 11 and 12 years in the state.
Richardson adds that Gardasil only protects against two of the HPV types that can cause cervical cancer, which means that girls who receive the jab are still vulnerable to other high-risk types of the virus that cause these tumours.
Journal reference: Journal of the American Medical Association (vol 297, p 813-819