July 25,2016 – HPV Cancers

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Anchor lead: Even as rates of many cancer types are falling, one keeps rising, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Human papilloma viruses cause cancer, and that’s why a vaccine has been developed against the most common cancer causing types.  Yet new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that rates of HPV associated cancers continue to climb nationally.  Connie Trimble, an HPV expert at Johns Hopkins, comments.

Trimble:  In the United States that’s in part because of exposure behaviors, and it’s also because hardly anyone gets the prophylactic vaccines. We know that at least 20% of human cancers are caused by specific infectious pathogens.  Of all the virally caused cancer, HPV causes more cancers than any other virus. We know how to prevent it.  We know how to screen for it in the cervix, and yet if you look at the CDC report that’s the biggest number of cases.   :28

Trimble recommends that everyone who’s eligible receive all recommended doses of the vaccine, and notes that she and her colleagues have also developed a therapeutic vaccine, with impressive results.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.