HPV vaccination plays no role in boosting sexually transmitted infections

Scientists have found that HPV vaccination is not associated with increase in sexually transmitted infections.

A barrier to human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination has been the concern that it may promote unsafe sexual activity, but a new study of adolescent girls finds that HPV vaccination had no link to the increase in sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

The HPV vaccination can prevent cervical, vulvar and vaginal cancers and genital warts caused by certain HPV strains. Still, HPV vaccination rates remain low in the United States and, by 2013, only 57 percent of females between the ages of 13 and 17 had received at least one dose, whereas only 38 percent had received all three recommended doses, according to the study background.

Anupam B. Jena, M.D., Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School, Boston, and coauthors used a large insurance database of females (ages 12 to 18) from 2005 through 2010 to examine STIs among girls who were vaccinated and those who were not.

The authors found use of the vaccination increased over time with 27.3 percent of females receiving the vaccination by the end of 2010 compared with just 2.5 percent of females at the end of 2006. The study included 21,610 females who were vaccinated against HPV and 186,501 matched females who were non-vaccinated.

The study found that females who were vaccinated were more likely to be sexually active in the year before vaccination compared with those who were non-vaccinated.

Study results also indicate that vaccinated females had higher rates of STIs before and after vaccination compared with those who were non-vaccinated. The difference in odds between the two groups implies that the HPV vaccination was not associated with an increase in STIs relative to the growth of STIs among non-vaccinated females.

"We found no evidence that HPV vaccination leads to higher rates of STIs. Given low rates of HPV vaccination among adolescent females in the United States, our findings should be reassuring to physicians, parents and policy makers that HPV vaccination is unlikely to promote unsafe sexual activity," the study concluded.

The study is published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.