HPV vaccine cut cervical cancer rate by nearly 90% in UK

Cervical cancer cases have plummeted nearly 90 percent after UK set out in 2008 to vaccinate girls ages 12 and 13 with the HPV vaccine. Girls vaccinated between 14 and 16 had a 62 percent drop and girls vaccinated between 16 and 18 years a 24 percent decline compared with the unvaccinated.

“The impact has been huge,” said Peter Sasieni, one of the researchers at King’s College London. Overall, an estimated 450 cancers and 17,200 pre-cancers have been prevented so far.

Sasieni said that was “just the tip of the iceberg” because those vaccinated were still young to be getting cancer, so the numbers would only grow with time.

• See: “HPV vaccine cutting cervical cancer by nearly 90%” by James Gallagher on the BBC News website (November 4, 2021)
  
  
• See the abstract of the scientific paper “The effects of the national HPV vaccination programme in England, UK, on cervical cancer and grade 3 cervical intraepithelial neoplasia incidence: a register-based observational study” by Milena Falcaro et al.