Boys should also get HPV protection
Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, May 17, 2008
B.C. I Boys as well as girls should be offered the free HPV vaccine to stop the spread of the cervical cancer-causing disease, former deputy health minister Dr. Penny Ballem says.
The vaccine, which will be offered by the provincial government to girls entering Grade 6 and 9 on a voluntary basis next year and women up to age 26, is not even licensed for use on males in Canada.
But Ballem insists that should change if the province is intent on controlling the spread of the human papillomavirus, which can lead to cervical cancer in women and genital warts and other cancers in both sexes.
“If you really want to wipe out a scourge, you have to go after the people who carry the virus and pass it on,” Ballem said. “There needs to be more of a burden on men in our society in protecting women.”
The virus is among the most common sexually transmitted infections in Canada. The vaccine, Gardisil, targets the two strains of the infection responsible for 70 per cent of cervical cancer.
Boys and men can only access the vaccine “off label” from their doctors if they want it but will have to pay the full cost, which is about $300 to $400 for treatment, said provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall.
Kendall said although there are calls to offer the vaccine to men, he doubts doctors are recommending it to males because of the high cost. Nor does he think it will be offered to the male population in the next year because it hasn’t been tested or licenced for use on males in Canada.
If it was to spend $100 million, he said, the government would likely to find other areas where the money could be better spent.
He noted it would about $8 million to vaccinate the Grade 6 girls, but said if you calculated over a lifetime how many deaths the vaccine would prevent and the quality of life for survivors, it works out to “$25,000 per quality of life adjusted year.”
For males, it would be about $35,000.
“The question is the return worth the investment?” he said.
“If the price comes down substantially it might be something you offered to both sexes.”
Kendall noted that while HPV can cause genital warts and a few hundred cases of penile and other cancers in males, it carries a higher risk for women, who can get cervical cancer and be possibly rendered sterile if they require invasive surgery to their cervix.
Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer for Canadian women aged 20 to 44, with 150 women contracting the disease each year, he said. Of those about 50 die annually.
“Far fewer boys die from cancer associated with HPV and no one dies from genital warts,” Kendall said. “We’re doing it for cancer.”
But Ballem said she doesn’t believe the decision to offer the vaccine to only girls and women was well thought out, noting there are “gaps in the coverage.”
The vaccination, which requires three shots over six months, will not prevent all cervical cancers, meaning women will still have to have annual pap smears, she said.
She added girls may even get false sense of security that sex is safer than it is because they’ve had the vaccine.
Apart from passing on the disease, she maintains that by vaccinating boys it would help boost immunity across the sexually active population.
She added women are more vulnerable to disease because they have more mucus membranes exposed to bodily fluids than men.
“The focus was never on where do they get the virus from? They get it from men,” Ballem said. “Frankly, maybe we should go after the source of HPV and the people who are spreading it around.”
Government promises free cervical cancer vaccination campaign
FREE vaccinations against a virus that can cause cervical cancer will be made available for girls aged 12 to 18 within the next five years.
Prime Minister Helen Clark announced last week that the government will pledge $164.2million to fund a vaccine against the human papilloma virus (HPV), a common sexually transmitted infection linked with cervical cancer.
A national immunisation programme will be rolled out from September.
Dr Nikki Turner of the Immunisation Advisory Centre says the move will have a “significant impact on reducing cervical cancer”.
“It has already been introduced to many Western countries including Australia, the UK, the USA, and Canada. This is a hugely positive step for young women in New Zealand.”
HPV viruses are part of the wart virus family and lead to a range of genital cancers and genital warts.
Every year 180 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and around 60 die from the disease.
“HPV infection is extremely common in all sexually active women,” says Dr Turner.
“Three years after becoming sexually active, around two thirds of women have been exposed to HPV virus, regardless of their number of sexual partners.
“While 98 per cent of infections resolve without any problems, about two per cent are still present after five years.
“Persistent on-going infection over 10 years or more can lead to cancer.”
The vaccine will be free for more than 300,000 young women aged 12 to 18 and is expected to save around 30 lives each year.
Officials urge caution after local STD increase
A local syphilis outbreak has renewed concern over the growing number of people infected with sexually transmitted diseases each year in the United States. With an estimated 19 million new infections reported last year, health officials are warning that just because you’re not showing symptoms it doesn’t mean you’re STD-free.
According to Melissa Brennan, director of Clinical Services at the Broome County Health Department (BCHD), all STDs, including syphilis, can be asymptomatic.
“There’s a pervasive belief in our country that ‘if I had an STD I would know it,’” Brennan said. “That is absolutely not true.”
“Every single STD can be, and often is, completely without symptoms,” she added, listing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia as examples.
Brennan also said that though the recent syphilis outbreak in Endicott includes less than 10 cases, it’s still a cause for concern.
“Until 2005 we hadn’t seen any syphilis cases since the early 1990s,” Brennan said. “So any cases catch our attention.”
The disease was believed to have been inactive in the area toward the end of the 1990s, but has made a dramatic comeback in the last several years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Web site, the number of nationally recorded syphilis cases rose in 2007 for the seventh year in a row.
Theresa Lyczko, public information processor for the Tompkins County Health Department, said that the county has also seen a large increase over the last two years.
“Typically we have had, on average, one case a year,” said Lyczko, who has been working with Health Services at Cornell University and Ithaca College to combat the spread of the STD. “Then in 2007 we had six cases and this year, so far, we’ve had five.”
According to Lyczko, it’s incredibly important to be tested for syphilis because it is a curable disease.
Sharon Dittman, associate director at Gannet Health Services at Cornell University, echoed Lyczko’s statement and said that the number of recent syphilis cases were very unusual for the county.
Four of the syphilis cases reported in Tompkins County were of people affiliated with Cornell University, Dittman also said.
Free syphilis and HIV testing is being provided for Cornell students and faculty for the rest of the semester in response to the cases, Dittman said.
Reports of a syphilis outbreak in Tompkins County, some of which have been linked with anonymous sex acts between people who met over the Internet, broke just weeks before the BCHD issued their warning.
Both Lyczko and Brennan said that they were unaware of a connection between the cases reported in the two counties.
According to University spokeswoman Gail Glover, BCHD indicated that the recent syphilis cases in Broome County could include members of the Binghamton University campus community, though a specific number was not given.
The BCHD offers free syphilis testing, available Tuesdays and Thursdays. Planned Parenthood also offers testing, with fees covered by student insurance or decided on a sliding scale, and University Health Services provides testing for students and requires payment of all laboratory processing.
Syphilis does not necessarily show symptoms at first but can be fatal if left untreated.
The growing number of STD infections has caught media attention recently after a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that one in four teenage girls in the United States has an STD.
According to the report, the two most common STDs found were the human papillomavirus (HPV) and chlamydia. Different strains of HPV can cause genital warts and cervical cancer, while untreated chlamydia, according to Brennan, is the No. 1 cause for female infertility in the U.S.
In Broome County an average of 1,029.4 people per 100,000 of 15- to 19-year-olds have chlamydia. The infection average of the total county population is 231.2 people per every 100,000.
Brennan said the amount of gonorrhea cases reported in the county has also risen significantly because people haven’t been getting treatment since the virus has begun to exhibit fewer or even milder symptoms that don’t get their attention.
Planned Parenthood has also seen a dramatic increase in gonorrhea cases in the area, according to Ingrid Husisian, director of public communications for the Planned Parenthood of South Central New York.
“In 2006 we tested 3,492 women for gonorrhea and came back with eight positives,” Husisian said. “In 2007, 5,236 women were tested with 26 positives.”
While Glover said BU’s Health Services has not seen an increase in sexually transmitted diseases on campus, it’s possible that students have tests done at other locations.
Both Brennan and Husisian stressed the importance of education, safe sex and understanding that not all infections will show symptoms.
Each also advised using the testing and treatment services of BCHD and Planned Parenthood respectively.
“If you don’t look for it, you won’t find it,” Brennan said.
University Health Services nears 1,000th course of HPV vaccine
The first cancer vaccine was supposed to be unequivocally a good thing.
The Gardasil vaccine, touted as a triumph of modern medicine, protects against four strains of human papilloma virus (HPV) that commonly cause genital warts and cervical cancer.
In the two years since obtaining FDA approval and being released by Merck, however, the vaccine has faced tremendous opposition from critics who believe that it encourages sexual activity in young women.
Adel Mahmoud, a senior policy analyst at the Wilson School and a molecular biology professor, is eagerly watching the controversy and anticipating the day when Gardasil will be routinely administered to all Americans as children.
But Mahmoud is not just a casual observer. Before coming to the University, he oversaw the development of the Gardasil vaccine during his tenure as president of Merck Vaccines from 1998 to 2006.
Mahmoud said that the search for the HPV vaccine “was very high on [Merck’s] development program” since a “discovery in the ’80s and ’90s [showed] that HPV was directly related to cervical, anal, penile, head and neck cancers.”
By age 50, 80 percent of women in the United States are infected with HPV. Cervical cancer kills 233,000 women every year, including about 3,700 in the United States.
The Gardasil vaccine protects against the two strains of the disease that cause more than 70 percent of HPV-related cancers as well as against the two other strains that cause more than 90 percent of genital warts, Mahmoud said.
About 20 million Americans and at least 50 percent of sexually active people in the world have genital warts, according to a 2005 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The vaccine was also widely hailed as a great success of scientific innovation because the HPV genome was particularly challenging to study and sequence. To develop an effective vaccine, the researchers first needed to understand what proteins were coded for by the genome.
Scientists are unable to culture HPV in vitro, a process needed to develop most vaccines. Nonetheless, “the HPV genome was sequenced, its proteins characterized, and their functions defined,” Mahmoud wrote in a May 2007 letter to Science magazine.
Distributing the vaccine
In June 2006, the vaccine was approved for distribution in the United States in a three-dose series over the course of six months.
Merck, like many healthcare practitioners, had originally hoped that states would mandate the vaccine for school-age girls to systematically combat the most common sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the world, HPV.
Not everyone, however, thought preventing the spread of genital warts was a good enough reason to mandate vaccination.
An ongoing controversy
Texas seemed poised to lead the charge against HPV, but heated controversy greeted Gov. Rick Perry’s executive order in February 2007 requiring that 11- and 12-year-old girls receive the vaccine. Three other states — New Jersey, Massachusetts and Virginia — mandated in 2007 that girls entering sixth grade receive the Gardasil vaccine.
“Vaccines work best when they are given before exposure to the infective agent,” Mahmoud said. “So the 11-to-12 age group was targeted for the vaccine because the idea was that this was definitely before exposure and sexual activity.”
Abstinence advocates believed the vaccine encouraged sexual activity in young girls who should instead be protecting themselves against the disease by avoiding sexual activity entirely. Legislators, on the other hand, were concerned that not enough was known about the relatively new vaccine to assure them of its safety.
The backlash against mandating the vaccine was successful.
Merck announced that same month that it would stop lobbying state legislatures to mandate the vaccine, fearing that campaigns instigated protests that actually hindered widespread adoption of the vaccine.
Following this decision, the Texas House of Representatives passed a law in April 2007 that barred the state from mandating Gardasil immunizations until at least 2011.
“We did not want to be the first in offering young girls for the experiment to see if this vaccine is effective or not,’’ State Representative Dennis Bonnen told The New York Times at the time.
Mahmoud, however, disagrees, citing the six years of vaccine testing, “which is probably more than most vaccines that come to market have. It would never have been approved by the FDA or the Europeans or the Australians if it had not been rigorously tested. They absolutely know the consequences.”
In these studies, the vaccine was found to be almost 100 percent effective in preventing HPV infection and absolutely 100 percent effective in preventing the pre-cancerous changes in the lining of the cervix that signal the beginnings of cancer.
The vaccine was initially tested on more than 25,000 women up to the age of 25, and thus, the vaccine is only approved for females ages 9 to 25, Mahmoud said.
Women who have already been infected with HPV should still consider getting the shots, Mahmoud explained, because the vaccine is effective against four strains of the virus and can protect women infected with one strain against the other three.
The FDA has not approved the vaccine for males, but Merck is currently conducting a clinical trial of the vaccine with a test group of 4,000 men. Some scientists, however, believe that waiting years for the final results of this trial could mean failing to protect an entire generation of American men and their sexual partners.
Australia and countries in Europe have already decided to give the vaccine to young men, a decision that was based on preliminary data showing that Gardasil produces an immune response in boys.
What about college students?
While legislators continue to debate mandating the vaccine for girls before they enter their teenage years and become sexually active, many healthcare practitioners are advocating that high school and college students get the shots before they get any older.
This campaign has met with only limited success, Mahmoud said, because of the difficulties associated with adolescent vaccination.
In fall 2006, University Health Services (UHS) began offering the shots to members of the University community at a cost of $402. UHS has since administered almost 1,000 doses of the vaccine, UHS coordinator for women’s and men’s health Olga Hernandez said.
Mahmoud explained that one of the biggest problems is that vaccination is widely regarded as “a childhood phenomenon.” This is coupled with the additional issue that adolescents interact with the healthcare system less frequently than other age groups. “And this [HPV is] an STI, which gives it a little bit more of a twist,” he said.
A CDC study announced in March showed that one in four females aged 14 to 19 is infected with at least one of the four most common STIs: HPV, chlamydia, trichomoniasis or genital herpes. HPV was by far the most common, affecting 18 percent of the girls who took part in the study.
Mahmoud said he thinks it’s likely that the current college-aged generation won’t be as thoroughly protected as it could be against HPV. Still, he has hope for the future.
“This was exactly what happened with the hepatitis B vaccine. When it first came out, it was also recommended for adolescents, and that was problematic, but now the first dose is given at birth, and it’s done; it protects us for the rest of our lives,” he said. “I think that’s what will happen with Gardasil, and I look forward to that day.”
Treating and Preventing HPV
Consequences of HPV
Understanding HPV
Genital Warts Health Project
Home Remedies to Remove Common Warts
Warts are ugly and persistent little rascals, but they aren’t the end of the world, nor do they come from toads. Nearly everyone has had a wart at some time in their life and as many can attest, they are often difficult to get rid of permanently.
What is a wart?
A wart is caused by the HPV (human papilloma virus) and that’s not just genital warts either. There are over 100 HPV types currently identified. Since warts are caused by a virus that also means warts are contagious. They can be transmitted from skin contact, sharing towels, sharing razors, not wearing shoes on locker room or pool room floors… nearly anywhere.
Most warts are characterized by their rough, cauliflower appearance and can last for as little as a few months or persist for years depending on how fast your immune system can attack and destroy the infection. Warts are also known to reoccur if they are not removed fully.
Different types of warts include:
Common warts, identified by rough, cauliflower-like surface occurring mostly on hands and knees.
Flat warts which are small, smooth and flat occurring mostly on the face, neck, hands, wrists and knees.
Filiform or digitate warts, characterized by their thread- or finger-like appearance which appear mostly near the eyes.
Plantar warts are usually identified as a large lump that occurs on the soles of the feet. Plantar warts can be painful when pressure is applied to the afflicted area.
Genital warts or venereal warts are soft bumps found near and on the genital area.
Home remedies to remove warts
The most popular remedy is duct tape (also called occlusion therapy) and studies show it works. In fact a study has shown that this duct tape home remedy is 20% more effective than standard cryotherapy. Not only is this method not painful in the slightest, it’s cheap too!
Apply a strip of duct tape to the wart for six days straight. Remove the tape and use a pumice stone or emery board to scrape the dead skin off the sight of the wart. Continue up to two months until the wart is totally gone.
Why does duct tape work? Some say there’s something in the glue that stimulates the immune system into attacking and destroying the wart. Others think that it’s because you’re suffocating the wart. Yet others think that it’s just an affective way to file down a wart. The true answer is not scientifically known.
You can also try placing a banana peel on the site of a wart, covering it then with a bandage. Replace with a fresh peel when the first one gets old. Keep applying until the wart is gone.
Garlic supplements can help your immune system attack a wart and destroy it quicker than without. Applying a small piece of garlic directly to a wart is also effective. Word of caution though; garlic can greatly irritate your skin.
Soak a cotton ball in vinegar and place it on the wart. Cover with a bandage and replace every couple days. Soon the wart will shrivel and fall off.
Put a potato on it. Rubbing a raw potato over a wart a couple times daily will help diminish a wart.
Dabbing a few drops of tea tree oil onto a wart a couple times daily will help it disappear. Tea tree oil is a powerful antiseptic and has a very high rate of success in removing warts.
–Magdalena (source)
Do you have any home remedies for warts? Comment and tell us about them!
Genital Warts Medicine And It’s Uses
There are various ways that you can contract genital warts just as there are many diverse genital warts medicine treatments available. Really, it’s possibly a tossup as to which one comes out the clear winner in sheer numbers.
For one thing, genital warts medicine doesn’t have to be restricted only to medicinal and surgical treatments. They can also include such treatments as natural remedies, herbal remedies, holistic approaches as well as alternative genital warts medicine treatment methods.
Accordingly not everyone feels comfortable about going down this particular route and will instead stick to the more usual practices of scientific genital warts medicine. For other people nonetheless, for whom these standard methods of treatment could have waned over the years, the alternative approaches to genital warts medicine treatments are just what they need.
The issue which arises here isn’t that any of these alternative approaches being wrong or unduly dangerous. It lies instead in the truth that most people will try and treat themselves without having first obtained a correct diagnosis. This might be stating the obvious, but not having gone throughout the rigors of medical school yourself, the average lay person is in no way qualified to diagnose or treat themselves.
Besides which, if you resort to taking over-the-counter medications to treat your genital warts you aren’t using customary genital warts medicine. The over-the-counter medications which can be readily found are not really suitable because of their strong nature and shouldn’t be used as a genital warts medicine.
Correct genital warts medicine can only be obtained with a prescription, and even after that you will find that the medication usually needs to be applied by trained medical personnel. Also, these types of genital warts medicine can not, in just about all of the cases, be used by pregnant women as the medicine can have a harmful effect on the unborn fetus. The same applies for individuals who have other underlying medical conditions which will stop them from taking the prescription genital warts medicine.
On the other hand, if people are looking for a readily available genital warts medicine which is also all natural, they need to look no further than their own kitchen. Garlic, and Vinegar is the order of the day, in conjunction with such items as Onions, Shitake mushrooms, Apple juice, Pineapple and even Green tea. All of these ordinary items can be safely used to help you fight off the HPV infection. They are all great natural genital wart medicine treatments and can be used without fear of side effects. That is if you’re not allergic to any of these ingredients!
Condylox is often used for the treatment of anogenital warts (external genital warts and perianal warts) and is the first FDA approved gel. Condylox works by destroying infected cells by stopping the cell growth process. The active ingredients in Condylox get straight to the problem and begin treating your genital warts immediately.
There are also other generic names for Condylox such as Podofilox. Outside of the USA Condylox is known as Condyline. There are a number of gels and creams used as genital warts medicine and your doctor is best placed to inform you of the various treatments.
Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=221753&ca=Medicines+and+Remedies
Recent
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- Genital Rash Can Transmit HIV
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- 1 in 4 teen girls have STD
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- Boys should also get HPV protection
- Government promises free cervical cancer vaccination campaign
- Officials urge caution after local STD increase
- University Health Services nears 1,000th course of HPV vaccine
- Treating and Preventing HPV
- Consequences of HPV
- Understanding HPV
- Genital Warts Health Project
- Home Remedies to Remove Common Warts
- Genital Warts Medicine And It's Uses
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