Researchers at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical
Center are reveling over the test results of a
new vaccine.
The vaccine would protect women against a virus
that causes cervical cancer and kills tens of
thousands of women each year.
Dr. Diane Harper at DHMC has been doing flips
since receiving the results of the study, literally.
Harper: If this vaccine had been 70 percent effective, I would learn how to do cartwheels and cartwheel down the hall. At a hundred percent effectiveness I am learning how to do cartwheels and I am cartwheeling down the hall.
So it is so exciting and so wonderful to be able to see that we have such promise.
The focus of Harper’s work is human pappiloma
virus—HPV.
Some strains of the virus cause warts, and other
strains cause cancer, but all are contracted by
skin to skin contact.
Harper: The HPV types 16 and 18, which is what the vaccine is geared toward, make up 70 percent of all the cervical cancers.
Eighty percent of people contract the virus at
some point in their lives.
And each year a half million women worldwide
get cervical cancer, most of them are in the
developing world.
Compared to the number of HPV infections,
developing cancer from it is rare.
Most HPV infections are recognized by the
immune system and defeated.
Harper: We know that HPV is part of being human, it’s part of living in human communities together, and in some ways can be considered a community kind of infection. And so as a community we can help figure out how to
take care of it and help figure out how to prevent it.
For women, getting regular pap smears can catch HPV infection and cervical cancer early.
And although treatments involve the crude approach of simply removing the affected tissue, they are usually successful.
But a dearth of public awareness about HPV helps perpetuate its membership in human society, especially among high risk age groups like these college students at dartmouth.
Male: …I really don’t know anything about it. I know that people get tested…
Female: I don’t know anything about it.
Male: I’ve heard of HPV; I don’t really know what it is. I heard something about cervical cancer. I’ve seen posters about it, haven’t really read of them…
Female: I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know that much about it…
Female: HPV, human papillova virus? It causes cervical cancer. We actually learned a little bit about it when we covered cancer in my bio class this term…
Female: One of the reasons it’s dangerous is it’s hard to tell it doesn’t really have any outstanding external effects…
Male: From what I’ve heard is that the people who are getting tested are women, so I would assume it’s a women’s issue, but I really have no idea.
The cancer-causing HPV strains are traditionally
considered a women’s health problem, because men do not suffer physically from them.
However, Dr. Harper quickly points out,
men do transmit the disease.
Harper: We’ve known as early as 1860 that men whose wives die of cervical cancer, when they remarry their second wife dies of cervical cancer.
Kaitz: Women with HPV get it from somewhere. They get it from sexual contact with men who have it.
Laura Kaitz is a physician’s assistant at the
Concord Feminist Health Center.
About six to ten percent of her patients who get
pap smears are infected with HPV.
She hopes the vaccine will become available as
part of a child’s routine suite of vaccinations,
like polio or hepatitis.
Kaitz: You may start seeing teenagers start getting vaccinated because you know you’re going to have more than one partner in the most cases in the most scenarios. So it may
be like any other vaccination that you’re getting early on it may be something that they start to get when they’re, you know, 15, 16, as a routine maintenance kind of vaccine.
Kaitz feels that women’s fear of cervical cancer
will prompt them to get the vaccine when it’s
available.
Kaitz: I do think women will do whatever they can to prevent it, so I think they would do it.
Grens: And how about men?
Kaitz: You know, it’s tough getting men to get in for health care, much less get a shot. So, um, I don’t know.
Kaitz may soon find out, Dr. Harper is also
testing a vaccine for men.
The benefits of an HPV vaccine go beyond
saving lifes; it will also save money.
According to Dr. Harper, pap smears are the most expensive screening tests in medicine.
Harper: By having a vaccine that will allow us to prevent the HPV infection to begin with means that we don’t have to screen women as often. It means that there will be less women with abnormal screens. It will also mean that
there will be less women who have to come to colposcopy, less women who have to have treatment, and in general a much happier population.
Harper is currently recruiting women for
a third trial of the vaccine, and she expects it to be generally available by 2010.
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