Study: Genital warts decline by 90 percent thanks to HPV vaccine
Incidences of genital warts declined by more than 90 percent in adolescent and teenage girls in the first four to five years after the introduction of a free human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine in Australia, MedPage Today reported.
According to a new study in BMJ, genital warts occurred more than 70 percent less often among women ages 21 to 30, compared to the three to four years before the vaccine became available. This was accompanied by a 50 to 80 percent decrease in incidences of genital warts among heterosexual boys and young men.
No decline was seen in heterosexual women or men older than 30, according to lead author Dr. Basil Donovan, of the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
“In 2011 no genital wart diagnoses were made among 235 women under 21 years of age who reported prior human papillomavirus vaccination,” Donovan and his co-authors noted online. “The significant declines in the proportion of young women found to have genital warts and the absence of genital warts in vaccinated women in 2011 suggests that the human papillomavirus vaccine has high efficacy outside the trial setting. Large declines in diagnoses of genital warts in heterosexual men are probably due to herd immunity.”
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