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Study results indicate that the
human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine that prevents women from acquiring the
strains of HPV that cause cervical cancer also seems to protect them from
throat cancer caused by HPV infection acquired during oral sex. At present, HPV
causes approximately 70 percent of oropharyngeal cancers, compared with 16
percent in the 1980s.
Researchers studied 5,840 sexually
active 18–25-year-old Costa Rican women who had received either the HPV vaccine
Cervarix or placebo. At the end of four years, each participant provided a
mouthwash gargle sample that collected throat cells. Results showed that only
one participant who had received the HPV vaccine was infected with the HPV-16
or HPV-18 viruses that cause cancer, while 15 women who had received placebo
vaccine were infected.
Dr. Rolando Herrero, head of
prevention for the World Health Organization’s International Agency for
Research on Cancer and the lead author, listed the limitations of the study,
including the absence of men from the study and the fact that participating
women were given baseline tests to make sure they had no cervical infections
but were not tested for throat or anal infections because the study’s initial
focus was cervical cancer. Additionally, researchers collected only one oral
sample, so they did not know if any participants had persistent infections; and
some people clear HPV on their own, so only a small number might lead to
cancer. Herrero also noted that four years was not long enough to know how many
cancers would develop. Researchers would have to wait 20 years or more to know
for sure, but ethical guidelines required that all participants get regular
examinations and that their physicians destroy any suspicious lesions before
they turn cancerous. Herrero surmised that men would get the same protection
from an HPV vaccination as the women because the vaccine produces identical
antibody levels in both sexes.
Dr. Marshall R. Posner, medical
director for head and neck cancer at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York,
commented that the large discrepancy in infection rates between the control
group and the vaccinated participants suggested the data were very reliable;
however, he noted that no one knew the length of the vaccine’s protection or if
re-vaccination was necessary.
The full report, “Reduced Prevalence
of Oral Human Papillomavirus (HPV) 4 Years After Bivalent HPV Vaccination in a
Randomized Clinical Trial in Costa Rica,” was published in the journal PLOS One
(2013; doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0068329) .
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is
dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and
empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV
virus.
To learn more about The Friends of
AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
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