HPV vaccine recommended for boys
Panel expands reach of the shots as a separate study shows vaccine also prevents precancerous anal lesions
By Nathan Seppa
A vaccine that prevents cervical cancer should also be given to boys in their preteen years, a federal panel announced on October 25. The move acknowledges a raft of studies showing that boys and men would benefit from the immunization, which protects against several cancers caused by the human papillomavirus, or HPV.
By recommending the vaccine for boys starting at age 11 or 12, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — whose recommendations serve as guideposts for doctors — places boys on nearly the same footing as girls, who are already advised to get the vaccine. HPV can cause genital warts and cancers of the vagina, penis, vulva, throat and anus.
Further bolstering a wider role for the vaccine, scientists report in the Oct. 27 New England Journal of Medicine that in men who have sex with men the vaccine limits the formation of precancerous anal lesions, a kind of cell growth that can lead to anal cancer in this high-risk group.
HPV rarely causes symptoms, but it is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States with more than 6 million new infections each year. Some of the strongest evidence supporting an expansion of the vaccine guidelines to males comes from studies of cancers of the throat and tonsils. Roughly 80 percent of such cancers are traceable to an HPV infection, says Robert Haddad, an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.