Very Few Eligible Young Women Opt to Take HPV Vaccine

• Young women and black women are least likely to complete the series.

PHILADELPHIA — Despite strong evidence of its effectiveness, few of the young women who are eligible for the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine take it, according to research presented at the Ninth Annual AACR Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference, held Nov. 7-10. What’s more, many of the teens who begin treatment do not complete the recommended three-dose regimen.

“Only about one-third of young women who begin the three-dose series actually complete it; this means that large numbers of teenagers are unprotected or under-protected from strains of HPV that lead to cervical cancer,” said J. Kathleen Tracy, Ph.D., assistant professor, epidemiology and public health, University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), Baltimore.

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