Research to find out if vaccination against HPV protects from cancers of the mouth and pharynx

Research by the University of Tampere and the Family Federation in Finland on the best strategy of implementing HPV immunization continues. It is now studied whether 15,000 adolescents who received the vaccination in secondary school have been protected from HPV infections of the mouth and pharynx and thus from the later development of cancers of the head and neck which are rapidly increasing.

Young women born in 1994-95 are now invited to participate in a study to find out how much less there have been cases of HPV infection of the mouth and pharynx and the uterine cervix in the adolescents who had the HPV vaccination at secondary school age compared to those adolescents who were not vaccinated or were vaccinated against the hepatitis B virus (HBV).

The whole research population consists of over 40,000 young adults who received the HPV or hepatitis vaccination at school age in 2002-2009. It is thus possible to conduct longitudinal follow-up using information from the Finnish Cancer Register to discover whether the HPV vaccination can protect from cancers in the head and neck area and from other cancers (like cervical cancer) caused by HPV.

Professor Matti Lehtinen at the University of Tampere says that this further increases the effectiveness of the HPV vaccination programme which has already been considered excellent and which is about to start in Finland next year.

- In the past 25 years there has been an epidemic in the EU countries caused by the cancer-inducing human papilloma viruses (HPV). Because of this, the occurrence of cervical cancer in fertile women has more than doubled for example in Lithuania, Slovakia and Finland in the past 15 years, says Professor Lehtinen.

In all Nordic countries, the occurrence of head and neck cancers in both sexes has also doubled in the past 15 years. In the Stockholm area, cancers of the head and neck area caused by HPV have increased by tenfold in the past 40 years in both women and men. It is estimated that in the US and England the incidence of these cancers will soon become more frequent than cervical cancer.

All HPV infections are asymptomatic and people are most likely to be exposed to infection within the first three years after becoming sexually active. A preventive vaccination protects from infection caused by several of the cancer-inducing types of HPV and from all resulting primary and early stages of cervical cancer with over 90 percent efficacy.

- The HPV vaccination does not cure an infection that is already there but when the vaccination is given early enough, at secondary school age, it can protect from most infections caused by cancer-inducing HPV variants, including infections of the mouth and pharynx, Lehtinen says.

The website of the HPV vaccination study Rokotiitus can be found at www.rokotiitus.net/english.html

For more information please contact
Professor Matti Lehtinen, University of Tampere, matti.lehtinen@uta.fi, tel. +358 40 543 7862