To prevent cancers, increase HPV vaccination

by Marie McCullough

Published Jan. 27, 2016, 3:06 p.m. ET

Fox Chase Cancer Center and the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Center have joined with 69 of the nation's top cancer facilities to call for increased HPV vaccination to prevent a variety of malignancies.

The HPV vaccine protects against sexually-transmitted strains of the human papillomavirus that cause most cervical cancers and precancerous cervical lesions, as well as rarer cancers of the vagina, vulva, penis, anus, head and neck.

Guidelines say to give the vaccine to girls and boys ages 11 and 12 -- with "catch-up" shots given into the 20s – but immunization rates remain disappointingly low, far below the rates for other adolescent vaccines such as those against tetanus and pertussis. Fewer than 40 percent of girls and 21 percent of boys nationally have received the recommended three doses.

One of the biggest reasons for the low HPV rates is that physicians simply aren't recommending it. You can read about why in this story that ran in The Inquirer in November. A recent study from Temple University and Fox Chase found, however, that vaccination rates are higher among lower-income teens, as we reported earlier this month.

When leaders of six Pennsylvania cancer centers gathered in Philadelphia last week for a summit on precision medicine, they all noted that HPV vaccination is an important cancer preventive.

The cancer centers say that insufficient vaccination is a public health threat and call upon the nations' physicians, parents and young adults to take advantage of this cancer prevention opportunity.

"The vaccination is our best defense in stopping HPV infection in our youth and preventing HPV-related cancers in the first place," Fox Chase Cancer Center CEO Richard I. Fisher said Wednesday in a press release. "There are plenty of cancers we can't prevent, but we have the tools to prevent HPV-related cancers."

The call for action to increase vaccination came out of a summit meeting, held in November at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, that was attended by experts from the National Cancer Institute, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Cancer Society and the cancer centers.