Cervical cancer deaths are falling among young American women

Cervical cancer rates have decreased since a human papillomavirus, or HPV, vaccine was introduced in 2006.SN: 10/6/08). Now, a new study is the first to show a big drop in cervical cancer deaths among the first women who were eligible for that vaccine in the United States.

“We had a hypothesis that after almost 16 years have passed, maybe we can start to see [the] initial impact of HPV vaccination on cervical cancer deaths,” says Ashish Deshmukh, an epidemiologist at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. “And that’s exactly what we observed.”

Deshmukh points out that he and colleagues cannot say for sure that the vaccine is responsible for the drop in deaths, which the team reports Nov. 27 in JAMA. This is because it is unclear whether the women in the study group were, in fact, vaccinated.

The HPV vaccine can prevent up to six HPV-related cancers: cervical, vaginal, vulvar, penile, oropharyngeal, and anal.SN: 4/28/17). Deshmukh’s team specifically analyzed cervical cancer mortality data from 1992 to 2021 for women younger than 25.

By grouping the data into three-year periods, the team found a gradual decline in cervical cancer deaths of almost 4 percent per period over the period 2013-2015. In that latter period, there were about 0.02 deaths per 100,000 people. The continued decline may be due to improved early prevention and screening methods for cervical cancer, the researchers speculate.

Then, over the following six years, the team saw a dramatic reduction in mortality of just over 60 percent. By 2019-2021, the rate had fallen to about 0.007 deaths per 100,000 people.

“They’re seeing this sharp drop in mortality at the time we would expect to see it because of vaccination,” says health economist Emily Burger of the University of Oslo. “Ultimately, we hope we are preventing mortality and death [with the introduction of vaccines]and this study really supports that conclusion.”

This step is supported by another study, published in June Journal of the National Cancer Institutethat found zero cases of cervical cancer in a group of women who received the HPV vaccine when they were 12 or 13 years old.

The new findings are important because the decline in mortality is only among young women, Deshmukh says.

“Cervical cancer is still very rare in this age group. And when we look at other age groups—women who are in their 30s and 40s—the incidence is much higher,” says Deshmukh. “The impact we’re seeing is a [preview] of what we might see in the next 20 to 30 years if we continue to improve vaccination rates.”

But since the COVID-19 pandemic, HPV vaccination rates in the United States have stagnated. Among teens ages 13 to 17 with at least one dose, the rates were nearly 77 percent in 2022 and 76 percent the following year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. The Department of Health and Human Services says its goal is to achieve an 80 percent HPV vaccination rate among this age group by 2030.

“When we look at HPV vaccination coverage in the US, we have not met our goal,” says Deshmukh. “We need to do better in terms of improving vaccination rates.”