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The study also points to how crucial the timing of vaccination is. “The girls that didn’t develop any cancer were vaccinated before becoming sexually active,” said Schlemer. “So we should not wait to vaccinate folks and really do it, for the guidelines, prior to becoming sexually active.”
The benefits of receiving the HPV vaccine before age 14
The authors of the Scotland study monitored the records of all women born between 1988 and 1996 who were eligible for cancer screening, about 450,000 women. Of that group, 40,000 were vaccinated between the ages of 12 and 13, and 124,000 received the vaccines at or after 14 years of age. The remaining women, nearly 300,000, were not vaccinated.
No cases of cervical cancer were found among the women who were vaccinated before they turned 14, even if they had only received one or two doses of the vaccine rather than the full, three-dose protocol. Also noteworthy is that women who received the three-dose protocol between the ages of 14 and 22 also benefited significantly. While some cases of cervical cancer were recorded in this group, the incidence (3.2 cases per 100,000 women) was two and a half times lower than among unvaccinated women (8.4 cases per 100,000 women).
“I was very surprised that there were no cases” of cancer in the group who received vaccines before 14, said Tim Palmer, the former clinical lead for cervical screening in Scotland and an HPV immunization consultant at Public Health Scotland, who was a lead author of the study. “In that age group, I expected about 15 to 17 a year in Scotland — and we have had none.”
The types of vaccine administered to the cohorts monitored in the study changed as newer ones became available, covering more types of HPV. Until 2012, the vaccine in use was the bivalent Cervarix, targeting HPV 16 and 18. Then the quadrivalent Gardasil was administered until 2023, when the nonavalent Gardasil 9 was introduced.
This is why it’s still possible that cervical cancers may still arise even in vaccinated women, caused by the HPV strains not targeted by the earlier vaccines. “There are obviously other HPV types that cause cancer,” Palmer said, noting that the current results don’t mean cases of cervical cancers, caused by less high-risk strains of HPV, won’t emerge in the analyzed cohort in the future.
The study’s findings don’t diminish the need for continued screenings for early detection of cervical cancers caused by HPV types that were not targeted in the original bivalent vaccine, said Palmer, but the vaccines effectively targeted the more aggressive strains of HPV (16 and 18).
The impact of the vaccination was also greater among women of lower socioeconomic status, who otherwise reported higher occurrences of cancer, said Palmer.
Ville Pimenoff, a senior researcher at the Karolinska Institutet and professor at the University of Oulu in Finland, published the results of a large cohort study in Finland in November 2023, which showed the effectiveness of cohort vaccination in creating herd immunity against HPV. He said the results from Scotland confirm his findings. “When you vaccinate in a cohort way, there seems to be very strong, protective immunity in those communities,” said Pimenoff, who was not involved in the Scottish study.
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aside: wifeanon is obgyn, sent this w this comment:
"—— so weird because we don’t do cervical cancer screening until 21. And it used to be 18, but we moved it to 21 because there were NO CANCER cases in kids this young. ——- obvious propaganda"