January is Cervical Cancer Awareness Month – a time to raise awareness of cervical cancer and the importance of vaccination and screening to prevent it. While cervical cancer rates have fallen in recent decades, the National Cancer Institute projects that approximately 13,820 women will have been diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2024, and more than 4,360 will have died from the disease during the year.
Yet, cervical cancer is one of the few cancers that can be prevented – in fact, the recommended vaccine can prevent 90% of cervical cancer cases.
What does the vaccine do?
HPV vaccines protect against infection by human papillomaviruses (HPV). HPV is a group of more than 200 related viruses, of which more than 40 are spread through direct sexual contact. Among these, two HPV types cause genital warts, and about a dozen HPV types can cause certain types of cancer – cervical, anal, oropharyngeal, penile, vulvar and vaginal.
How do HPV vaccines work?
Like other antiviral immunizations, HPV vaccines stimulate the body to produce antibodies that, in future encounters with HPV, bind to the virus and prevent it from infecting cells.
Today’s HPV vaccines utilize virus-like particles (VLPs) that are formed by HPV surface components but aren’t infectious because they don’t have the virus’s DNA. Nevertheless, they do closely resemble the natural virus, and antibodies triggered by VLPs also attack the natural virus. VLPs have been found to be strongly immunogenic, meaning that they induce high levels of antibody production by the body. This makes the vaccines extremely effective.
However, these vaccines don’t prevent other sexually transmitted diseases, nor do they treat existing HPV infections or HPV-caused disease.
Why is HPV vaccination important?
The combination of HPV vaccination and cervical screening can provide the greatest protection against cervical cancer. Also, HPV vaccination reduces the risk of developing cancers caused by HPV at sites other than the cervix.
Not only does vaccination protect vaccinated individuals against infection by the HPV types targeted by the vaccine (and possibly other types, depending on the extent of cross protection), but vaccination can also reduce the prevalence of the vaccine-targeted HPV types in the population, thereby reducing infection in individuals who aren’t vaccinated (a phenomenon called herd protection, or herd immunity). For example, in Australia, where a high proportion of girls are vaccinated with the HPV shot, the incidence of genital warts went down during the first four years of the vaccination program among young males—who were not being vaccinated at the time—as well as among young females.
Is the vaccine safe, and does it work?
HPV vaccination has proven extremely effective. It has the potential to prevent more than 90% of cancers caused by HPV. In addition:
- Fewer teens and young adults are getting genital warts.
- HPV vaccination has also reduced the number of cases of precancers of the cervix in young women.
- The protection provided by HPV vaccines lasts a long time. People who received HPV vaccines were followed for at least about 12 years, and their protection against HPV has remained high with no evidence of decreasing over time.
HPV infections and cervical precancers (abnormal cells on the cervix that can lead to cancer) have dropped since 2006, when HPV vaccines were first used in the United States.
- Among teen girls, infections with HPV types that cause most HPV cancers and genital warts have dropped 88%.
- Among young adult women, infections with HPV types that cause most HPV cancers and genital warts have dropped 81%.
- Among vaccinated women, the percentage of cervical precancers caused by the HPV types most often linked to cervical cancer has dropped by 40%.
Keep in mind …
That’s why the HPV vaccine is recommended earlier rather than later. It protects your child long before they ever have contact with the virus.
Talk to your doctor to learn more about how and when to receive the vaccine.
Learn more online.
For more information on cervical cancer, visit these helpful links:
- Check out our previous podcast about cervical health – and our blog piece about protecting yourself against cervical cancer.
- Learn more about the causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment and management of cervical cancer, from our friends at Carle Health.
- Listen to this podcast from Riverside Healthcare to hear more about cervical cancer awareness and prevention.
- Read this short blog article from Sarah Bush Lincoln Health System about preventing cervical cancer and finding it early.
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