Maybe I could have understood if I had said she was my wife. But it is still stupid to assume that there will be no other sexual partners ever again in her life.
With the prevalence of HPV, it's likely that we have one or more strains already, but who knows. Maybe the strain of a future partner is what will trigger cancer.
If anyone here can enlighten me about the pharmacist's attitude, I would be grateful.
I got vaccinated way before I met her, and even as a male I didn't get any comments from the pharmacists that gave me the shots.
Simplest route would be to call your primary doctor and ask if they can give it to you at your next annual checkup.
Your PCP may give a vaccine off-label though, which is how I got my Shingrix, though I had to pay out of pocket.
So please don’t get it regardless of age. Its not really considered effective for women who have been sexually active for some time.
Which is why its only recommended for girls, not women.
https://www.ssi.dk/vaccinationer/boernevaccination/vaccinati....
Tldr; Dont rush to get a vaccine that is probably not effective for you. Make an appointment with your doctor and discuss it with her first.
I dont see any reason not to take if you get it for free and you are planning to be sexually active with multiple different partners.
this was pre- antivaxxer anxiety, and just run of the mill 'is the government condoning sex' anxiety, and it was controversial for that reason alone
the issue was that if you've been exposed already then the vaccine doesn't work. they had a test for women that can prove they've been exposed or not, and most adults have. they don't have a test for men that can prove they've been exposed or not, and most adults have. At the time, they had also only considered males to be carriers, with no cancers themselves.
so for the US government to recommend a limited stock and get insurers on board, it was all based on probabilities of exposure and utility.
I was younger at the time, naturally, I paid $600 out of pocket to get it across 3 doses because I figured it was worse than that, or I could get some 'male ally' brownie points from women. I wasn't wealthy then but figured this experience couldn't be taken from me even if I went bankrupt.
Since then, they've further linked it to throat cancers in males, because of our mouth's contact with genitals, and insurers are told to cover it across all genders and up to mid 40s. that's not really much of a difference now though, since the checkpoint is basically the same group of people, 13 years later.
They're still assuming older people are not worth bothering with, due to likely exposure.
There is an amusing side of this if you are male and not vaccinated yet, since nobody can tell if you've been exposed still: keep your sexual relationships with younger women. lol. in case you needed an excuse - higher probability they're vaccinated.
Another thing to keep in mind was that the initial trials were only using cervical cancer endpoints - the association between HOV infection and cervical cancer is really strong. At that time, vaccinating boys provided only indirect protection (you couldn't infect a female partner), rather than direct protection (you won't be infected) in the context of cervical cancer.
Women prior to sexual debut were the biggest "bang for the buck" and the obvious first recommendation target.
Researchers both at universities and in private industry then started working on other populations based on alternative endpoints.
As pm90 wrote, I strongly recommend getting vaccinated [2] unless a doctor tells you otherwise, even if you already have HPV or have had previous potential exposure.
[1] Circulating tumor human papillomavirus DNA whole genome sequencing enables human papillomavirus-associated oropharynx cancer early detection - https://academic.oup.com/jnci/advance-article-abstract/doi/1... | https://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/djaf249
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPV_vaccine
(had three doses in my 30s via Planned Parenthood)
“The route of HPV transmission is primarily through skin-to-skin or skin-to-mucosa contact. Sexual transmission is the most documented, but there have been studies suggesting non-sexual courses.
The horizontal transfer of HPV includes fomites, fingers, and mouth, skin contact (other than sexual). Self-inoculation is described in studies as a potential HPV transmission route, as it was certified in female virgins, and in children with genital warts (low-risk HPV) without a personal history of sexual abuse. Vertical transmission from mother to child is another HPV transfer course” [1].
You’ve got a low probability of getting polio, but there’s no reason not to be vaccinated if you can.
Even if you already have a strain, there are multiple types. In fact, people who got a vaccine early on, should consider an updated shot for more complete protection.
Something like 80% of people are sexually active at all will be infected with HPV at some point. You may not have been sexually active, but your future partners may have been. I personally have a friend who went through stage 4 cancer contracted from her (now ex) husband.
So, of course not literally everyone needs to take it, assess your own risks, but it's quite an easy, highly effective vaccine: don't overthink it.
Wasn't it 3 doses before?
Apparently, it’s about as easy to get as an old-school medical marijuana card.
Results vary by state though. No need to travel to Canada or Mexico (yet).
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/ivac/the-power-of-a-single-dose...
Conversely, almost every adult over 45 is carrying some form of HPV and a few of those forms cause cancer. If any of those adults has unprotected sex with someone without HPV who is unvaccinated, they almost certainly will transmit the virus. Even if condoms are used, HPV can still be transmitted. This is a much more contagious virus than HIV.
The HPV vaccine is both extremely safe and extremely effective. Suggesting that every human consider getting the vaccine -- with appropriate consultation with their healthcare provider -- is sound advice.
You're very confused about the statistics here.
I don't take medical advice from internet strangers, especially when it contradicts my doctors'.
I'm not particularly interested in discussing the how's and why's. My doctor said he doesn't recommend I get it, so I don't.
It is shocking that there are still places in the world where this is controversial. You can tell a lot about the qualities of a society by the way they care for their own.
I feel your comment is a generalisation and could be construed as provocation/trolling. Probably not your intention, but just so you are aware how this is coming over.
Better maybe: “societies that have good health care thrive” or something like this. Sounds less judgmental and it doesn’t put all US Americans in one basket.
I fully agree on the content though, only criticising the form here.
Anyway, well done Denmark. We are trying to do the same thing here in Australia with some success. Not sure how it became about the US but good luck to you all as well.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2008/press-releas...
> Kennedy for years has earned referral fees from Wisner Baum, a Los Angeles personal injury law firm that is currently suing Merck, alleging the pharmaceutical giant failed to properly warn the public about risks from its vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV), Gardasil, according to financial disclosure documents filed by Kennedy with the Office of Government Ethics.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-confirmation-robert-f-ke...
Also, the eligibility criterion of not vaccinating people above certain age is NOT valid. I mean, sooner better. But if you are adult and there is any chance that you ever get a new sexual parter, get a vaccine.
90% people with get at least one HPV strain in their life. 10-30% people have at least one HPV strain right now.
(I recommend doing PCR test with strains genotyping. I do it periodically.)
Sure, our organism usually gets rid of such on 1-3 years, with no consequences. Yet, vaccine boosts your immunity.
Also, over 50% of cases of throat cancer are HPV-lead. So if you have male body, also vaccinate - both to protect others and yourself. Ideally for 9 strains, but HPV 16 and HPV 18 are by far the most important.
A few more links: https://pinboard.in/u:pmigdal/t:hpv
Not only that - I learned recently that you can contract certain strains from a shower floor [1]
[1] https://dermnetnz.org/topics/non-sexually-acquired-human-pap...
The eligibility criterion has primary been about controlling cost to focus about the groups where the societal effect is greatest.
I expect it may gradually get broadened, but most places you can also get it privately even if you fall outside those ages.
E.g. in the UK, most private providers will vaccinate you up to 45, and at least some private providers will give you the vaccine with no upper age limit (and a lower age limit of 9) at a relatively reasonable cost (~180 pounds per dose - 2 to 3 doses)
At the same time, guidelines go differently, e.g. "Vaccination is not recommended for everyone older than age 26 years." from https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/hpv/hcp/recommendations.htm.... These things propagate among doctors and most of them do not recommend vaccination (contrary to modern research data!)
HPV can cause cancers in the cervix, vulva, vagina, penis, anus and back of the throat [1].
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/hpv/about/cancers-caused-by-hpv.html
There's a chart about 2/3 down the page that shows a drop in several age groups, and a particularly striking drop in the 20-29 age group: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/fd3e820c-4610-4c4e...
> No cases of invasive cancer were recorded in women immunized at 12 or 13 years of age irrespective of the number of doses. > Women vaccinated at 14 to 22 years of age and given 3 doses of the bivalent vaccine showed a significant reduction in incidence compared with all unvaccinated women
For the second group, cases dropped from 8.4 to 3.2 per 100k.
Random anecdote: with whole genome sequencing, which is fairly common among the rich with cancer, you can sometimes find the exact cancer driving genes that the HPV has amplified. I remember looking at one case where the HER2 gene was amplified with many copies, and you could see it attached to chunks of HPV genome. Fortunately there's now many drugs that specifically target amplified HER2, originally developed only for breast cancer, where there are diagnostic test to find the subset of breast cancers with the amplification.
[1] https://www.cancercouncil.com.au/news/australian-success-sto...
[2] https://www.ncirs.org.au/sites/default/files/2022-07/HPV%20F...
[3] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2...
What a great system.
My health insure only covers HPV vaccines for 26 year olds and younger: https://www.sbk.org/beratung-leistungen/vorsorge-und-praeven...
- it was an expensive vaccine
- it was therefore initially introduced to women as a cervical cancer thing
- HPV however hits men at around half the cancer rate of women but through throat cancer
Or something like that. So actually the benefit to men is of a similar order of magnitude as that to women but it was just given to women to save money. Every child should be given it.
Edit: Total Rate (of HPV caused cancers) in Women: Approximately 15.9 cases per 100,000 females per year.
Total Rate in Men: Approximately 9.3 cases per 100,000 males per year.
Edit 2: Severity-Adjusted HPV Cancer Burden:
When adjusted for the severity and impact on life, the relative burden of HPV-related cancers shifts. Cancers with higher mortality rates and more debilitating treatments, like oropharyngeal cancer, carry a heavier weight.
Total Burden in Men: Approximately 135 DALYs per 100,000 males per year.
Total Burden in Women: Approximately 125 DALYs per 100,000 females per year.
from https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/by_th...
Am I understanding that correctly?
But because the modern versions of these vaccines cover many strains (initial vaccines were two, Denmark chose a 4 way vaccine, now a nine way) it's very possible that you get a meaningful benefit by being protected from say six strains your body has never seen, even though the three it has already seen wouldn't be prevented.
Considering we're talking about a sexually transmitted disease, the much higher prevalence in Africa of having multiple simultaneous sexual partners is surely relevant.
Drugs, though, probably have very limited potential.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... ("Kennedy played key role in Gardasil vaccine case against Merck")
> "Details of the Gardasil litigation show how Kennedy took action beyond sowing doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines in the court of public opinion and helped build a case against the pharmaceutical industry before judges and juries."
> "Kennedy, a longtime plaintiffs' lawyer, became involved in the Gardasil litigation in 2018 in collaboration with Robert Krakow, an attorney specializing in vaccine injury cases, Krakow said"
Not like disease prevention is a universally good thing and some people tend to have sex.
At the end of the day, religious radicals like STDs because it enforces their worldview that having multiple sexual partners in a lifetime is a sin.
[1] https://www.sdu.dk/en/nyheder/faldende-fertilitet
[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=western+democracies+decreasi...
https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/advice-and-prevention/vaccin...
Now they're offering it to children as part of the standard regimen, which is great.
I experienced zero side effects when I got HPV vaxxed at 38yo.
[1] The list has just a single entry for now.
This site is full of people perfectly capable of reading most studies. I would much rather see these links go to studies than endless clickbait articles about studies.
The conclusion of the study show that about 30% of the women in the study from 2017-2014 tested positive for one of several types of HPV infection. This does appear to be a reduction from an earlier 2013 study but the earlier study was by different authors with different methodology so gauging the scale of the reduction is not straightforward. My opinion is that a safe conclusion of the study is that HPV prevalence has not increased.
> What have we learnt from this study?
> Infection with HPV types covered by the vaccine (HPV16/18) has been almost eliminated. Before vaccination, the prevalence of HPV16/18 was between 15–17%, which has decreased in vaccinated women to < 1% by 2021. However, about one-third of women still had HPV infection with non-vaccine high-risk HPV types, and new infections with these types were more frequent in vaccinated than in unvaccinated women.
The conclusion seems to be that the vaccine is extremely effective at preventing infection by the strains included in the vaccine. One might reach a stretch conclusion and infer that the 9-valent vaccine would be even better as it would (probably) dramatically reduce the risk of several of the remaining “high-risk” variants.
16/18 are the most carcinogenic strains, they have been close to eradicated in Denmark. "Denmark close to wiping out leading cancer-causing HPV strains after vaccine roll-out" is the full headline and 100% accurate.
Those were the only two high risk strains covered by the vaccine used in the time frame studied. The study covers the first cohort of girls given the 2008 version of the vaccine when they recently reached age to start screening. It is expected to not see other strains affected in this study, even though current vaccines are broader. The total number of high risk HPV cases in the study went down post-vaccination.
The notion of numbered strains of HPV is about diverging lineages going back hundreds of thousands of years in a highly conserved, slowly mutating virus. They are not comparable to things like seasonal COVID or flu strains.
That number was referring to different strains not covered by the vaccine. The study says the rate of infection dropped to less than 1% among those strains the vaccine protects against.
Bad news is that many countries came close to wiping out measles et al. too, but it takes sustained effort to keep things like that.
Prior to Covid, the antivaxx scene was vaguely left-and-green oriented, biomoms, vegans and other "very natural" people; you would expect them to vote for Greens or even more alternative parties. This changed abruptly and now the antivaxx scene is mostly rightwing, but the common base is still the same distrust.
I wonder if this is the price we pay for radical informational transparency. Nowadays, democratic countries with reasonable freedom of press cannot really prevent their own fuckups from surfacing in the worst possible way. Some people react by complete rejection of anything that comes from "official" channels and become ripe for manipulation from other actors.
Like, anti-vaxers died at higher rates in Covid [1]. This will continue across disease outbreaks, particularly ones for which we have near-comprehensive vaccines like measles. And given antivax sensibility is heritable (through parenting, not genes), one would expect this to stabilize the population over several generations to one that doesn’t have this defect.
RFK Jr.: "Gardasil is probably the single worst mass vaccine that we've ever seen. This vaccine targets millions of preteens and teens for whom the risk of dying from cervical cancer is zero. Nobody in their right mind would ever take this vaccine if they actually read the clinical literature."
"Death rates in the Gardasil trials were 37 times the death rates for cervical cancer. Children who take that vaccine, the Gardasil vaccine, are 37 times more likely to die from the vaccine than they are to die from cervical cancer. The problem with Gardasil, like most vaccines, is it was never tested against a true placebo, an inert placebo."
"And the CDC and HHS say, if you don't test it against a true placebo, it's not science. You have no way of gauging whether the injuries you're seeing from the product are being caused by that product, or whether they're just bad, sad coincidences. The entity that is actually performing the study is, and paying for the study, is Merck."
"Merck got to decide which injuries were being caused by Gardasil and which were just bad coincidences. And because it had that power, it just wrote them all off as bad coincidences."
"You can do that when there's no placebo, because the injuries they were seeing in the control group, where the girls were getting aluminum neurotoxins, were identical to the injuries they were getting in the Gardasil group."
"So they said, well, we don't have to report any of these as vaccine injuries. They were able to license something that is insanely dangerous."
