By: Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today
13 December 2010
Many girls and young women may not be completing all three doses of the quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine in a timely fashion, researchers reported.
In a single-institution retrospective analysis, only 14% of girls and young women completed all three doses within seven months of the first, and only 28% did so within 12 months, according to Lea Widdice, MD, of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and colleagues.
One key factor that affected completion rates was race — white women and girls were more likely to finish that series than their black counterparts, Widdice and colleagues reported in the January issue of Pediatrics.
That finding is concerning, the researchers argued, because it may exacerbate existing racial disparities in cervical cancer.
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