Quadrivalent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination was associated with a substantial reduction in the incidence of cervical cancer in a Swedish review of more than 1 million girls and women vaccinated from 2006–2017.
It’s been shown that the vaccine (Gardasil) helps prevent genital warts and high-grade cervical lesions, but until now, data on the ability of the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, although widely assumed, had been lacking.
“Our results extend [the] knowledge base by showing that quadrivalent HPV vaccination is also associated with a substantially reduced risk of invasive cervical cancer, which is the ultimate intent of HPV vaccination program,” said investigators led by Jiayao Lei, PhD, a researcher in the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.
The study was published online October 1 in The New England Journal of Medicine.
“This work provides evidence of actual cancer prevention,” commented Diane Harper, MD,