HPV or human Papillomavirus is responsible for genital warts, penile and anal cancer in men. Penile and anal cancers are rare however genital warts affect 200 in every hundred thousand men. A vaccine for HPV has recently been voted for recommendation by an FDA advisory committee.

HPV is sexually transmitted and four strains of the virus are targeted by the Gardasil vaccine. 70% or cervical cancer in women is caused by strains 16 and 18 of HPV and 90% of genital wart cases are caused by strains 6 and 11.

The vaccine was voted 7 to 0 with an absent vote that it should be recommended to the FDA and 7 to 1 that it was safe for men aged 19 to 26. The clinical trials that the committee were reviewing covered 5000 men aged between 19 and 26 across a number of countries including the US. Three trials were reviewed in total.

The participants were given three shots of Gardasil over a six month period with a control group given a placebo over the same period. Every participant had their health checked by an independent doctor who checked for signs of HPV. Gardasil’s effectiveness was 89% in men who had never experienced HPV before.

Although the FDA does not have to follow the recommendations of its advisory committees, it usually does so, and there were no serious side effects recorded in the data to go against any decision to use the vaccine in boys of the right age. Only after thorough FDA consulting will the matter be decided. Cervical cancer is prevented in females aged between 9 and 26 by using a Gardasil HPV vaccine. Boys in some countries are also already getting the vaccine and not health issues have been raised so far.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 6:50 am and is filed under Learning Problems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.