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Vaccine could foreshadow the end of cervical cancer

Promising trial results of a vaccine for the virus linked to the disease has many physicians guardedly optimistic about its use in prevention.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, amednews staff. Dec. 16, 2002.

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The news that a vaccine designed to prevent infection with one variant of the human papillomavirus has some experts contemplating the possible end of cervical cancer or, at the very least, significant changes to the traditional approach to women's preventive health.

"If this really comes into play and really eliminates cervical cancer, we may need to change our recommendations for Pap smear screening," said Mitchell Edelson, MD, attending surgeon in the gynecologic oncology department of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. "It could eliminate Pap smear screening, but that's way down the line."

According to a study published in the Nov. 21 New England Journal of Medicine, researchers at centers across the United States, led by the University of Washington in Seattle and funded by Merck Research Laboratories, randomized more than 2,000 women to receive either three doses of a vaccine made up of particles derived from HPV-16, the variant linked to at least half of all cervical cancers, or three doses of a placebo.

After just more than 17 months, women who received the vaccine were virus-free. Of those who received the placebo, 41 had acquired the virus, including nine who had already developed precancerous lesions on the cervix. The final tallies do not include those who received the vaccine but tested positive for the virus in the study's first seven months. These subjects were excluded because researchers believe they acquired HPV before immunity may have kicked in or before the study began. [...]