British students take up HPV vaccine, study finds

Up to 70 percent of British schoolgirls are likely to take up the offer of a vaccine to protect them against cervical cancer, despite doubts about other vaccines, researchers reported on Thursday.

A pilot study in the city of Manchester suggests enough parents will agree to have their teenaged girls vaccinated to make the program work when it begins nationwide in September, the researchers reported in the British Medical Journal.

Two vaccines are available to prevent infection with the human papilloma virus or HPV, the main cause of cervical cancer.

Merck and Co’s Gardasil protects against four strains of HPV most likely to cause cancer and genital warts, while GlaxoSmithKline’s Cervarix protects against two strains.

In young women not yet infected with the common sexually transmitted viruses, both vaccines have been found to prevent the pre-cancerous changes caused by HPV.

But some parents in Britain and elsewhere in Europe question the safety of vaccination. The HPV vaccine is especially controversial as it protects against a sexually transmitted disease, is currently given only to girls and requires several doses.

Two school organizations in Manchester agreed to take part in a study led by researchers from the University of Manchester. The HPV vaccine was offered to 2,817 girls aged 12 and 13 at 36 secondary schools.

“Vaccine uptake was 70.6 percent for the first dose and 68.5 percent for the second dose,” Loretta Brabin and colleagues wrote.

The main reason given by parents for refusing to allow vaccination was insufficient information about the vaccine and its long-term safety, with 36 percent of those who refused the vaccine giving that as a reason.

Only 10 percent of parents mentioned age as an issue and just 3 percent mentioned worries that girls might feel safe to have sex after being vaccinated.

“These are encouraging results for the forthcoming national HPV vaccine program but the final criterion for success will be the proportion of girls who receive all three vaccine doses,” Brabin’s team wrote.