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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next >> In the nearly two years that have followed its approval, Gardasil has been added to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's vaccination recommendations for girls ages 11 to 12. The vaccine, designed for females from ages 9 to 26, requires three shots taken within a six-month period.
Researchers have also discovered that the vaccine guards against vaginal and vulval cancers. HPV is present in 80 percent of the 6,000 cases of vulval and vaginal cancers diagnosed each year.
It's hard to know how many girls have actually received the vaccine. Merck bases its estimate on anecdotal reports from the field, but the American Cancer Society has no estimates of its own.
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"We don't know how many [vaccines] are sitting in a refrigerator somewhere, versus in a girl's arm," Saslow said.
New research is looking at other ways the vaccine could be used to guard against cancer.
For example, Merck is studying whether the vaccine would work in women as old as 45, Dougherty said. The company also is exploring whether the vaccine works against other strains of HPV beyond the four it was originally meant to target.
Research also is under way to see if boys should receive the vaccine, as a way to protect girls from HPV. While males obviously can't get HPV-linked cervical cancer, they can help spread the sexually transmitted virus.
"Because males can transmit HPV to their partner, putting their partner at risk for developing cervical diseases, we have had a male research program going for some time now," Dougherty said.
The vaccine may also prove to be a way to protect men as well. HPV has been shown to be a cause of throat cancer, which affects both sexes.
"We just know the vaccine is safe in males, but we need to prove that it works," Saslow said. Test results for males are still two to three years away, she said.
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