Protecting girls from cervical cancer might be possible with just one dose of the HPV vaccine rather than the three now recommended, a new analysis suggests.
The
authors of the study acknowledged it isn't convincing enough to change
vaccination strategies immediately. But if their results are confirmed,
requiring just one dose of the vaccine could have a big impact on how
many girls around the world get immunized.
Cervical cancer is the fourth-most common cause of cancer death in women worldwide and is estimated to kill more than 260,000 every year.
Researchers
from the U.S. National Cancer Institute and elsewhere looked at data
from previous trials covering more than 24,000 young women to see how
much protection they got from one, two or three doses of the HPV
vaccine, Cervarix. They estimated vaccine effectiveness after about four
years to be between 77 percent and 86 percent for all the young women,
regardless of how many shots they received.
If fewer doses could be used, "the potential is huge to prevent the deaths of millions of women," said Julia Brotherton, medical director of the National HPV Vaccination Program Register in Australia
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