HPV vaccination substantially reduced the burden of HPV infection, genital warts, and cervical precancers, especially in highly immunised populations.
The population-level effects of human papillomavirus (HPV) immunisation began to emerge 4 years after vaccination programmes were introduced. Now, researchers have performed an updated review and meta-analysis of 65 studies measuring the effects of HPV immunisation on frequency of HPV infection, genital warts, and cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2+ (CIN2+; a precursor of cervical cancer) 10 years after vaccine implementation in 14 high-income countries.
In addition to benefitting immunised individuals, vaccine programmes are also advantageous for unvaccinated people through herd immunity; thus, population-level analyses are essential to fully assess the benefits of immunisation. This rigorously executed update of a prior systematic review should strengthen our confidence that HPV vaccine implementation will eventually abrogate cervical cancer.
The need is greatest in resource-poor settings where cervical cancer screening programmes are nonexistent or very limited and vaccine programmes are just being rolled out.