Teen boys’ HPV vaccination rate rises
CDC: More parents seem to understand the importance
The rate of HPV vaccination among teen boys in the United States surged in 2015, suggesting that more parents and physicians are embracing the message that it’s as important for boys to be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus as it is for girls.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 49.8 percent of boys ages 13 to 17 had gotten at least one of the three doses as of 2015, up 8 percentage points from 2014. The rate for teen girls rose more slowly: Almost 62.8 percent had gotten at least one dose, compared with 60 percent in 2014.
“The rate is increasing faster for them than it ever has for girls,” said Erich Sturgis, a head and neck cancer surgeon at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Nancy Messonnier, director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, also said she was heartened by the latest numbers. While the improvement is occurring at a slow pace, she said, HPV vaccination is increasingly being viewed as routine. “Our message is getting through — that the HPV vaccine is cancer prevention,” she said.
The key to further improvement in vaccination rates, she said, is working with physicians to make sure they understand the importance of the vaccine and how to talk to parents about it.
The completion rate for all three doses continued to fall far short of the government’s goal of 80 percent of adolescents. Just 41 percent of girls and 28.1 percent of boys had gotten all three doses. By contrast, 86.4 per- cent of adolescents had received the tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis vaccine, and more than 80 percent of had received meningitis vaccines.
Gardasil, the most widely used HPV vaccine, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006 for girls and in 2009 for boys. But for years, its use in males has lagged. Public health experts and physicians, including cancer doctors, are increasingly alarmed about an epidemic of HPV-related throat cancers with middle-aged and older men. More than 9,100 HPV-related throat cancers are diagnosed in U.S. men every year.