gardasil vaccine by merck, page-3

zvinb - conventional wisdom is that the vaccine will have no impact on cervical cancer screening - whether HPV testing or something else.

Consider:

1) Vaccine only works against 70% of cervical cancers (those caused by Type 16 & Type 18 HPV)

2) Vaccine only works on women who have never been exposed to HPV. Therefore, need to get girls before they have had numerous sexual partners. Therefore, most women over approx 25 today is not impacted by vaccine.

3) NOBODY KNOWS yet how long the vaccine is effective for. It may only be a relatively small number of years. Until this is better understood (which requires good longitudinal data) then govt would be crazy to make any changes at all to cervical screening guidelines.

It is all a little more complex - but all of the above also supports a bigger role for HPV Testing (as opposed to Pap) in the future also.