New findings dispute past suggestions of a link between the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination and development of multiple sclerosis or other demyelinating diseases.
Since it was introduced in 2006 the HPV vaccine and has become widespread among young girls and women, raising a number of health concerns, a press release reported. These concerns could undermine the public's confidence in a potentially life-saving vaccine.
One concern that has been raised is the vaccine can lead to the development of MS, and the media has picked up on a number of cases of the condition occurring after the vaccine was administered.
To assess the link between the vaccine and MS researchers conducted a study that included Danish and Swedish females between the ages of 10 and 44 years old and looked at their medical history spanning from 2006 to 2013. The database included information of the qHPV vaccine and incident diagnoses of MS and other demyelinating diseases.
The study included 3,983,824 girls and women; out of this sample 789,082 were vaccinated during the study period, with a total of 1,927,581 qHPV vaccine doses. During the follow-up period 4,322 multiple sclerosis cases and 3,300 cases of other demyelinating diseases were identified but only 70 and 90, respectively, where within the two year risk period after vaccination. After an analysis of the data the researchers did not find a significant link between the vaccine and these conditions.
"Our study adds to the body of data that support a favorable overall safety profile of the qHPV vaccine and expands on this knowledge by providing comprehensive analyses of multiple sclerosis and other demyelinating diseases. The size of the study and the use of nationwide registry data of unselected populations from Denmark and Sweden allowed adequately powered analyses that are likely generalizable," the authors wrote, the news release reported. "These findings do not support concerns about a causal relationship between qHPV vaccination and demyelinating diseases."
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal JAMA.
