Tracking Data: HPV Vaccine has lowered Genital Warts

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Genital Wart Decline Tracked to HPV Vaccine

By Charles Bankhead, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Published: April 18, 2013

Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco

• The incidence of genital warts declined by more than 90% in adolescent and teenage girls in the first 4 to 5 years after introduction of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine in Australia.
• Note that the reductions in wart incidence among girls and women were accompanied by 50% to 80% decreases in the incidence of genital warts among heterosexual boys and young men although no decline in wart frequency was seen in heterosexual women or men older than 30.

The incidence of genital warts declined by more than 90% in adolescent and teenage girls in the first 4 to 5 years after introduction of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine in Australia, investigators reported.

Genital warts occurred more than 70% less often among women 21 to 30, as compared with the 3 to 4 years before the vaccine became available. The reductions in wart incidence among girls and women were accompanied by 50% to 80% decreases in the incidence of genital warts among heterosexual boys and young men.

No decline in wart frequency was seen in heterosexual women or men older than 30, Basil Donovan, MD, of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, and co-authors reported online in BMJ.

“In 2011 no genital wart diagnoses were made among 235 women under 21 years of age who reported prior human papillomavirus vaccination,” the authors noted. “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.”

The study provided a glimpse of the impact of HPV vaccination in a real-world community setting as opposed to a clinical trial.

“It actually generated data consistent with what we hoped and predicted would happen,” said Greg Poland, MD, of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. “It showed in a large study that [the vaccine] worked and it worked fabulously.”

It is probable that the results are