Health News: HPV vaccination may benefit boys as well as girls

healthydailymail.com The authors of the study do, however, say that the first priority in delivering cancer benefit for both sexes is to ensure the highest possible uptake of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination by girls, which counters the viral infection linked, for them, to cervical cancer.

But further to the knock-on benefit for men brought by reducing HPV circulation among females in this way, there can be added direct effects of vaccinating boys, they say.

The study finds that, after higher vaccine coverage among girls, the additional benefit against the HPV-related cancers that affect men - anal, penile and some throat cancers - would come from preventing the infection among men who have sex with other men.

Illustration HPV vaccination

Johannes Bogaards and Johannes Berkhof at VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam, with colleagues, designed their study to estimate the cancer benefits to men if boys were vaccinated in their country as well as girls.

In the Netherlands, universal coverage is only for girls; aside from the US, the few places to have a policy for the injection of boys too include Australia, Austria and two provinces in Canada.

Using the Dutch national cancer registry and epidemiological studies, the authors analyzed the impact of HPV vaccination on cancers affecting men linked to the papillomavirus. Their conclusion is:

"Men will benefit indirectly from vaccination of girls but remain at risk of cancers associated with HPV.

The incremental benefit of vaccinating boys when vaccine uptake among girls is high is driven by the prevention of anal carcinomas, which underscores the relevance of HPV prevention efforts for men who have sex with men."

An editorial commenting on the study - written by Karen Canfell, DPhil, director of Cancer Council NSW, a cancer research organization in Australia - supports the priority for vaccination of girls, but which in turn reduces the need to vaccinate all boys and therefore also the cost-to-benefit ratio of doing so.

Dr. Canfell, also an associate professor at the Prince of Wales Clinical School of the University of New South Wales, says the findings "reinforce those of prior analyses that found that adding boys to established vaccination programs in girls becomes less cost-effective as female coverage increases."

This is a point also made by the study authors - that universal vaccination of boys comes with serious cost-to-benefit considerations for populations.

Inclusion of boys into preadolescent HPV vaccination programs is warranted, they say, "once the incremental costs of vaccination conform to society's willingness to pay in comparison with the incremental health effects."