HPV vaccine recommendations updated by American Cancer Society. Here’s what to know
The American Cancer Society on Wednesday released new guidelines for who should get the HPV vaccine.
The recommendations come after a review of a 2019 update on human papilloma virus vaccination from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which is the main source of immunizations policy in the United States, and offer guidance on when the vaccine should be given and when it’s most effective.
Here’s what the new guidelines advise:
Children should be given two doses of the HPV vaccine between the ages of 9 and 12.
▪ Teens and adults up to age 26 who haven’t gotten the vaccine or who didn’t get all doses should be vaccinated or get “catch-up” shots. Three doses should be given if the first shot was received at age 15 or older.
▪ Adults over the age of 26 should not get the vaccine.
The ACIP’s 2019 guidelines recommended “shared clinical decision making” regarding HPV vaccination for people ages 27 to 45. But the ACS on Wednesday said it “does not endorse” that recommendation.
The vaccine has “low effectiveness” and “low cancer prevention” among this age group, the ACS says, and there isn’t sufficient guidance on how to select those who would benefit.
Health care providers should start offering the vaccine to children at age 9 or 10, the ACS recommendations say, as “routine” vaccination between ages 9 and 12 is believed to “achieve higher on‐time vaccination rates.”
The vaccine is most effective when given in early adolescence, the ACS says. By age 18, the effectiveness decreases “dramatically.”
Health care providers should inform patients ages 22 to 26 who haven’t gotten the shot or who didn’t get all their doses that the vaccine will be less effective in lowering their cancer risk.
HPV is the “most common sexually transmitted infection” in the United States, according to the CDC. Although in most cases HPV goes away on its own without causing any health problems, some types of the virus can cause some cancers, according to the CDC.
Anyone who is sexually active can get HPV, and the CDC estimates that “79 million Americans, most in their late teens or early 20s, are infected.”
Symptoms can take years to develop, making it hard to know when you’re infected, the CDC says. Additionally, it can take years or decades for cancer to develop after a person gets HPV, and it’s impossible to know who will develop cancer or other health problems following infection.
But most HPV infections that lead to cancer can be prevented through vaccination, the ACS says.
The HPV vaccine is safe and effective, per the CDC.
