HPV Vaccine Not Fully Tested on Young Girls Says Dartmouth Researcher

Diane Harper spent two decades researching the vaccine.

It prevents four types of humanpapiloma virus, or HPV.

Trials have shown it to be nearly 100% effective in preventing two of the HPV strains that cause most cervical cancers.

The trials centered on 25,000 women aged 15 to 26.

The FDA, however, approved the vaccine for girls aged nine to 26 – and the CDC recommends it for the same age group.

But Harper says that the vaccine hasn’t been adequately tested on girls under 15.

And the Fort Wayne Daily News quotes Harper as calling vaccinations of girls under 15 akin to a public health experiment.

“What I mean with that is that the studies for efficacy have been done in 15 to 26 year olds …meaning that we know it will prevent cancer precursors in 15 to 26 year olds.”

The antibodies do show up in the small group of younger girls vaccinated in the trials.

So FDA and CDC, Harper says, recommended it for girls younger than 15.

But, she adds, it’s dangerous to bridge the results of one group to another.

“So the bridge is that we don’t know if they’re effecting in 9 year olds or 11 year olds –“We don’t know. There’s precedent to say yes we can assume it and other precedent to say we can’t assume it.”

The New Hampshire Department of Heatlh and Human Services offers the vaccine free to girls aged 11 to 18.

That policy was partly the recommendation of a study committee led by Republican Representative Fran Wendelboe, from New Hampton.

“I had toured research facils and kenw it was coming…first techy cured. …I wanted us to be ready for it but didn’t take the step of mandating it – because I knew that once the CDC recommended it that it would be added to our list of immunizations.”

She says the vaccine is controversial.

Some parents felt because it protects against sexually transmitted diseases that it would promote promiscuity.

But Wendelboe said she thinks most parents embrace it once they hear it may save lives.

Suzanne Boulter, a pediatrician at Concord Hospital, says a lot of parents of her young patients are demanding the vaccine.

“Way before we had the vaccine when they started advertising on TV an in magazines we had parents calling us all the time wanting to be on the list wanted it as soon as it came in they wanted to get their kids in.”

And Boulter says she believes from studying the research that the vaccine is safe and she is more than happy to give it to her young patients.

But Dartmouth Medical School’s Diane Harper says that the vaccine could cause problems when young girls are getting other inoculations at the same time.

She says the immune system can become confused by more than one vaccine.

“we don’t know yet that the immune system will look at both and say oh yes a good army of antigens or it might say one is here and I can’t see other one and not make antibodies to it or it may say gosh we’re seeing all these foreign invaders and attack the body itself.”

The CDC has received reports from doctors about potential side effects from the vaccine, but the numbers are very small.

Despite her concerns, Diane Harper is still over-the-moon about the vaccine’s ability to prevent some cervical cancers.

And she expects it will reduce by half the 600,000 or so surgeries conducted annually to remove pre-cancerous cells.

But for cervical cancer rates to fall significantly, boys would need to be immunized as well.

For NHPR News, I’m Dianne Finch