Bad News for Older Women Who Want the HPV Vaccine
Reader Comments
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Clarification
Your logic is not specific enough here. Its true that women can become reinfected with HPV after clearing the disease - but only with a different strain. Since Gardasil only covers two strains (16 and 18) of at least 13 different cancer-causing strains, women can still become infected after vaccination with hpv strains not contained in the vaccine.
And lets look at why the FDA is withholding approval for older women:
a Merck spokeswoman says the agency is concerned with Gardasil's ability to protect older women from cervical cancer. Um - since Gardasil is only approved for the age range too young for cervical cancer - maybe we don't know if it really protects against cervical cancer at all. Now that older women (the ones at risk for cervical cancer) are not responding as well - we may very well be looking at a completely worthless vaccine.
There's also a little something called serotype replacement that might be at work here. Since, as I said above, there are many different strains of cancer causing HPV, getting rid of two of them (16 and 18) may just allow the other strains to have more play on the cervix and create more illness than they used to. This possibility was noted in the FDA notes at the approval meeting for Gardasil and was to be monitored as the vaccine is administered to the general public. Basically, we have absolutely NO IDEA what the long-term effects of this vaccine may be. I think we can be thankful, however unusual it may be, that the FDA is exercising some caution here.
