There has been concern that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination could promote unsafe sexual activity, but new findings suggest this isn't so.
The recent study found young girls who got the HPV vaccine were not more likely to engage in risky sexual activity or contract sexually transmitted infections (STIs) than those who were not, the JAMA Network Journals reported.
The HPV vaccine can protect against certain cancers and genital warts caused by the virus, which affects a whopping 45 percent of U.S. women between the ages of 20 and 24. Despite the high rate of HPV, vaccinations remain extremely low in the U.S.
A team of researchers looked at an insurance database of females between the ages of 12 and 18 that spanned from 2005 to 2010. They found the vaccination rates in this group jumped from only 2.5 percent in 2006 to 27.3 percent in 2010.
The researchers determined females who were vaccinated were more likely to be sexually active in the year before vaccination than those who were not vaccinated, and vaccinated women had a higher rate of STIs both before and after receiving the shots.
The rate of STIs in the year before vaccination were highest among HPV-vaccinated females compared with those who were not vaccinated and the rates of STIs increased both for vaccinated and nonvaccinated girls in the year after vaccination. The difference in odds between the two groups suggests there is not a link between the vaccination and an increase in STIs.
"We found no evidence that HPV vaccination leads to higher rates of STIs. Given low rates of HPV vaccination among adolescent females in the United States, our findings should be reassuring to physicians, parents and policy makers that HPV vaccination is unlikely to promote unsafe sexual activity," the study concluded.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
