September 14, 2009 By Claire McCarthy, M.D. Boston Children's
Hospital None of us wants a child of ours to get cancer. It's a
terrible thought unthinkable, even. So a vaccine that prevents
cervical cancer sounds wonderful. We give it to our daughters,
and there's one less thing for us to worry about as they grow
up. The problem is, it's not quite that simple. Most cases of
cervical cancer are caused by the human papillomavirus, or HPV.
HPV is the most common sexually transmitted illness; over a
lifetime, the risk of catching any kind of genital HPV is
75-90%. Cervical cancer rates aren't nearly that high, though.
That's because our immune systems are generally pretty good at
getting rid of HPV. There are about a hundred different strains
of the virus; 15 of them are known to cause cancer. Four strains
16, 18, 31, and 45 cause 80% of the cancer we see. Gardasil, the
most common HPV vaccine, protects against only two of the
cancer-causing strains. While I am a proponent of the HPV
vaccine (my eldest daughter ha