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In addition to being carriers of the virus, boys can develop cancers.
HEALTH – Visiting a college in Jarnac (Charente), Emmanuel Macron announced, Tuesday, February 28, the establishment of a free vaccination campaign against the papillomavirus in schools, from the start of the next school year, for all pupils in 5th grade. A measure which, according to the President of the Republic, will protect 800,000 students a year against cancers linked to this virus.
In France, each year, HPV, the English abbreviation for “human papillomavirus”, are responsible for more than 30,000 precancerous lesions of the cervix, more than 6,000 new cases of cancer, including that of the cervix. – which causes more than 1,000 deaths per year – of the ENT sphere, anus, vulva or vagina, and penis.
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For many years, prevention has focused on young women. However, Hélène Péré, virologist at the Georges Pompidou European Hospital in Paris, insists: we cannot eradicate HPV without vaccinating boys. She explains why HuffPost.
Why is it important that boys also get vaccinated?
Dr Hélène Péré. Young boys are just as concerned because HPV can cause cancer of the anal canal, oropharynx, tonsils… And of course, boys also have an oropharynx and an anal canal, so the vaccine protects them. Also, the objective with a prophylactic and preventive vaccine like this is to eradicate the virus as we eradicated smallpox. It’s a bit utopian, but if we want to achieve this objective, we must vaccinate both girls and boys. Because even if the latter may not develop pretumoral lesions, cancers or genital warts, they remain potential vectors and can contaminate women. We can’t put an end to this virus if we don’t prevent potential vectors from contaminating.
However, until recently, we heard little about prevention around the papillomavirus in men…
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France initially only targeted young girls because 100% of cervical cancers are linked to this infection. So, believing they were doing the right thing, the authorities focused on them. But, it should also be noted that if only 9% of boys are vaccinated against HPV at present, it is also because the vaccine has been reimbursed to them since January 2021 only. The high public authorities excluded them themselves from this debate. Seeing the effectiveness of gender-neutral vaccination in other countries and with the strength of conviction of several experts, they ended up extending vaccination to boys, which is a very good thing.
Is France behind in HPV vaccination?
Yes. We are a country in which there is a fairly significant protest movement against vaccines, as we saw during the Covid crisis. Vaccines are decried as a general rule. And for the one against HPV, the fact that girls were the main target didn’t help.
For what ?
I think on the parents’ side, there was a misunderstanding because they had to put the burden of vaccination on their daughters when HPV is sexually transmitted in boys too. There was also this idea that getting your daughter vaccinated meant getting her into sexuality, when not at all! We want to intervene upstream of sexuality, because we know that the exposure will take place at that time. Children must have neutralizing antibodies to prevent infection with this HPV virus at the time of exposure. On top of that, there have been misinformation regarding the triggering of adverse effects, particularly in terms of autoimmune diseases. Some doctors even advised young girls not to have this vaccine against the papillomavirus. But this has been completely denied by huge WHO and ANSM studies on huge cohorts. of vaccinated patients, which showed that there was absolutely no increase in the incidence of these autoimmune diseases.
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Do you think that the measures announced by Emmanuel Macron are effective?
Yes, because one of the most important levers is vaccination in schools. Because there is a kind of inter-individual emulation, and when you’re in a group, you feel stronger and more serene to go there. In Sweden, this is what they do and more than 80% of young people are vaccinated. There is now an undeniable drop in the number of cancers of the cervix. In fact, buses arrive and come to vaccinate all 5th graders, like the measure proposed by Emmanuel Macron. And that is one of the main methods for increasing vaccination coverage. The second lever, in my opinion, is the teenagers themselves. We must educate them and explain the issues to them. That’s what we’re trying to do with the ARC Foundation on Twitter. In a comic book format, we lift the taboos that surround HPV and which it is not always easy to talk about with your parents.
Why is vaccination only for young people aged 11 to 14?
At this age, we consider that we are upstream of the sexual life. And to be effective with a preventive vaccine, it is necessary to be upstream of the exposure in order to have antibodies neutralizing the virus. For those who have not been vaccinated in this age group, there is a catch-up of 3 doses of vaccines for 14-19 year olds. In France, the male homosexual population can be vaccinated up to the age of 26 because this population is particularly at risk of cancer of the anal canal. We limit ourselves to this age because, between contamination by the virus and the potential development of cancer, there are approximately 15-20 years. It’s a very long process. But in 2019, a study was published in The New England Journal of Medicinewhich showed that even among young women vaccinated between 17 and 30 years of age, the incidence of cervical cancer is reduced by more than 50%.
Vaccinating the under 30s could therefore be a next step?
Exactly. This is one of the other potential levers. Because there, we are in the process of putting things in place to increase vaccination coverage, but all all the young girls who are 20 years old are no longer part of the indication and find themselves without a vaccine. It’s a shame, especially if the catch-up works later. It would go even further in the prevention of these pretumoral lesions.
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