Cervical cancer vaccine gives women 4 years protection

Researchers say a vaccine that protects women against a virus that causes cervical cancer is effective for more than four years.

They say they have found that women given the cervical cancer vaccine Cervarix had high levels of antibodies against two of types of the human papillomavirus (HPV) for up to 4.5 years after receiving their last dose.

Dr Diane Harper, of Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire, who conducted the trial, says the findings set the stage for wide scale adoption of HPV vaccination for prevention of cervical cancer.

According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France, cervical cancer is one of the most common cancers in women and each year 470,000 women around the world are diagnosed with the disease and 230,000, mostly in the developing world, die from it.

HPV is a sexually transmitted infection and the strains 16 and 18 of the virus are responsible for more than 70 percent of cervical cancers.

The results of a recent European survey of more than 1,500 women in five EU countries have shown that only 5 percent could identify HPV as the cause of cervical cancer.

Harper and her team followed up 800 women who took part in the original trial of the vaccine in which it was compared to a placebo and found that the women given the vaccine not only had high levels of antibodies against HPV-16 and HPV-18 but the levels did not decrease over time.

The vaccine also protected against new and persistent infections and was effective against HPV-45 and HPV-31, the third and fourth most prevalent cancer-causing types of the virus.

The research is published online by The Lancet medical journal.