November 2, 2011 • 22 mins
The human papillomavirus, or HPV, is the most commonly transmitted sexually-transmitted disease, and researchers have noted a rise in HPV-related cancers. Is the HPV vaccine safe and effective? Listen in to learn more about HPV.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stop Mom? Never told you?
From house Stop works dot Com. Hello and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And the day
(00:20):
that we're recording this episode about h p V and
the HPV vaccine. UH, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention here in Atlanta, Georgia, their Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices,
gave its thumbs up for boys getting vaccinated at eleven
years old and HPV treatment for boys can start as
(00:44):
young as age nine. And the CDC had already um
offered a blanket recommendation for doctors to recommend younger girls
to get vaccinated for HPV, and now they're saying the
same thing for for boys. The FDA had already approved
guards Sel for use, which is the HPV vaccine, one
(01:04):
of two FDA approved HPV vaccines. UH, they'd already approved
that for boys, I believe in two thousand nine. And
now the CDC is coming back and saying that that, yeah,
do it. Yeah, the more protection the better. UM. And
that's not all the news that we've seen recently. UM,
there's been a lot in the news lately about head
(01:26):
and neck cancers being on the rise because of HPV infections,
and a lot of that is coming from UM. I
guess more people are having oral sex because they think
it's safer than vaginal or anal sex. And so you're
seeing these infections pop up in the throat and the
you know, in the back of the mouth, on the tongue. Uh.
And this is why we wanted to revisit HPV. Um
(01:49):
Mine and I talked about gardens sill and the HPV
vaccination for boys quite a while ago, but since it
has been popping up in the news, and since it
is the most calm then s t I commonly transmitted
s T I. According to the CDC, it's always good
to talk about the human papaloma virus because there are
(02:10):
more than forty types of it. It is everywhere. UM
not to not to be all scare tactic about it,
but the chances of contracting HPV are frighteningly high, right,
And chances are you won't even notice if you have it.
A lot of people will not notice that they have
it because they won't get any side effects. They won't
(02:32):
get genital wards Necessarily, the strains of HPV that cause
genital wards are not the same as the strains that
cause cervical cancer and other types of cancer, So you
might just be passing it onto people and not even
know it. Right. Um, This is coming from the CDC.
They point out that most infected people don't realize that
they're infected or passing along the virus. And it's also
(02:55):
possible to get more than one type of HPV. And
just to put some numbers around this, uh, and to
freak out everyone listening, of sexually active adults will have
HPV at some point in their lifetime. And when you
break that down by different um age and gender demographics,
that percentage can go up even higher. I want to
(03:16):
say that it's something like women, um over sixty some
of them at some point will have come in contact
or contracted HPV. And right now, that translates to about
twenty million Americans who currently have HPV in an additional
six million who get infected every year. Right that is insane. Um.
(03:39):
And yeah, you know the milder forms, like I said,
tend to they can clear up. You know, your body
will fight off an infection but it's those scarier strains
that you have to really worry about, and that's why
it's so important for sexually active women to get a
cervical exam, perhaps mere every year at least, Right, And
that's also why there's been a big health push in
(04:00):
the past few years for girls to get Gardissil or
server X HPV vaccines UM. And it's a series of
three shots, and girls can get them from starting at
age nine and up to the h cut off is
twenty six years old. And the whole rationale behind starting
the HPV vaccines so early is to um to give
(04:25):
them vaccinated before they have any kind of sexual contact
with anyone else. Right, And that's caused a stir with
a lot of parents, a lot of politicians, because you know,
a lot of people are saying, I don't want this.
This is an innocent little girl. Why should we you know,
why should we think of her in terms of having sex?
You know, she's too young for all of that. But
the thing is, and one of the articles that I
(04:45):
read about this pointed this out, UM, is that a
lot of parents don't know when their kids become sexually active,
and so there's an argument that UM maybe go ahead
and protect your son or your daughter against HPV before
before they start having sex. And right now, Virginia and Washington,
d C are the only two local governments that mandate
(05:10):
I think it's only the girls, not the not the boys,
although that might change with the CDC approval that happened today.
They're the only two governments that mandate middle school age
girls to get the vaccine as part of the whole
Measles moms Fabella immunizations that they have to get in
order to attend public school. And Governor Rick Perry, who
(05:32):
was running for the GOP ticket, has come under fire
from some of the other candidates out there because as
Governor of Texas, he actually um recommended a similar mandate
for middle aged middletown middle aged girls middle school aged
girls in uh in Texas, which he since recanted. Um
(05:57):
talking about the boys though, since they are half of
the equation here. In February of this year, a study
was published in the New England Journal of Medicine showing
that boys and young men who received the HPV vaccine
appeared to be at a reduced risk of contract of
contracting the virus and developing general wards associated with it UM.
They studied about four thousand sexually active males between the
(06:19):
ages of sixteen and twenty six, and about point five
percent who received all three shots the full series developed
genital warts during the subsequent two to three years that
they were followed. UM. About two point eight percent of
males who received the plus CBO ended up developing warts,
and because of that efficacy rate, the HPV vaccine is
(06:42):
now on the American Academy of Pediatrics list of recommended
vaccines for boys, and one of the studies um lead
authors use this as an example. Um or I guess
the reason why the burden of vaccination against the HPV
and because it is so widespread, should not just solely
(07:03):
rest on girls and women, even though obviously cervical cancer
can only affect females, but cervical cancer is only one
of many things, such as genital wards or cancers of
the anus or penis that can also affect men. Right,
Joel Pelevski, one of the one of the lead authors
of the study, said that the burden of vaccination should
(07:25):
definitely not fall solely on girls and women. He does
say that the disadvantage of a universal vaccination program for
males would it would be costly. But also he says,
the most serious disease is caused by HPV, such as
cervical cancer, only affect women, and I don't like, I mean,
I get that, but I mean, where are the women
(07:45):
getting HPV? You know, if we vaccinate from both sides,
then hopefully everyone could be all around protective exactly, And
especially because a lot of these health links to HPV
um have been coming out lately, it seems like, yes, uh,
we should be taking more of a the two pronged approach.
(08:07):
For instance, earlier this year, the American Cancer Society identified
thirty five thousand new cases of oral and oral pharyngeal
basically mouth and throat cancers, and they linked that to
people who were already infected with HPV. In a study
published October three in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, found
(08:29):
that HPV is contributing to a growing number of head
and neck cancers in the US. Like we said, um,
these are a fair and gel cancers have been rising
since the nineteen eighties, and it could be that there's
this increase, like I said, increase in number of people
having oral sex because they think it's safer and so
I just think it's important that we reiterate that just
(08:50):
because you're not having vaginal or anal sex, you know,
just because the chance of pregnancy is lower, doesn't mean
that the chance of contracting a disease is lower. And
just to get an idea of of how large set
jump has been, uh, the virus was found in sixteen
percent of those nineteen eighties samples, and in two thousand
(09:13):
or sorry and samples collected after the year two thousand,
that percent has jumped to seventy two percent, which is
one reason why Doctor Kevin J. Collin, who's the director
of the green Bound Cancer Center at the University of Maryland,
said quote, it's very clear that this is becoming a
major epidemic, right. And Colin wasn't involved in this particular study,
(09:33):
but he's been doing his own research, very similar research
in Baltimore and has seen similar increases in these cancers
the past thirty years. UM. Dr Maura Gillison, the lead
researcher in the study, though says don't panic. There are
still fewer than ten thousand cases a year and not
everyone with HPV gets cancer UM, which is true, but
(09:55):
the cancers that happen are not pretty. UM. These are
a fair and geal cancers, tumors that occur in the
base of the tongue, in the area just behind the mouth,
including the soft palette, the tonsils, and the side and
back walls of the throat, and they can contribute to
breathing problems, changing and voice and all that. And unfortunately
there's no screening test for orro pharyngeal cancers UM. And
(10:19):
of those cancers, they're referred to as HPV positive cancers,
which basically means that doctors were able to identify HPV
strains in that person who also had developed cancer UM
and it was caused by a strain HPV sixteen, which
is a strain targeted by Gardasil and Server X. And
we should point out that those two FDA approved HPV
(10:42):
HPV vaccines don't target all forty plus strange strains of HPV,
but the most cancerous ones, the most dangerous UM. Now,
what's interesting is that there are two types of or
pharyngeal cancers that doctors and researchers have identified, that caused
by alcohol and tobacco and those caused by HPV, And
(11:04):
of those, HPV accounts for seventy of those cancers. So
it's not even like tobacco, smoking, whatever is causing most
of the cancers. It's it's HPV causing most of these
And part of that is because smoking has decreased so much.
Between and two thousand and four, HPV positive cancers increased
(11:26):
two hundred and twenty five per cent, while HPV negative
or pharyngeal cancers dropped fifty And that's related to probably
the reduction and smoking and tobacco use. But the silver
lining to this terrible, terrible cloud is that patients with
HPV positive cancers do live longer. UM tumors in these
(11:48):
patients tend to have less genetic damage and are therefore
more responsive to cancer therapies, and there's a sixty reduction
in the risk of death after these patients diagnosis UM.
And speaking of smoking, there was some news recently again
linking HPV two lung cancer, and this is coming from
(12:10):
the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and it found
that people with lung cancer were significantly more likely to
have several high risk forms of HPV antibodies already in
their bodies, kind of like what we were talking about
with the HPV positive cancers, the oral um oral fair
gel cancers. Right, and this was consistent across people who smoked,
(12:32):
who quit smoking, who had never smoked, So they took
that they took that into account whether you smoked, and um, yeah,
it was consistent for everybody. But the researchers did point
out that they weren't exactly sure what type of role
the HPV virus might have been playing. So that's why
I keep saying that there's been they've uncovered correlations, but
they're not exactly sure, um, what the causation might be,
(12:56):
So more research is needed. But there has been a
clear pattern established, right, there's a link, and um, the
researchers are calling for more studies to happen. Um. It's
not like if you get HPV you're then going to
contract lung disease in the next lung cancer in the
next year or anything. But it's just something that they
want to take a look at. And as if, as
(13:18):
if things couldn't get even worse, there was a story
from the New York Times that I found it yesterday, UM,
reporting on a study finding that women infected with HPV
or two to three times as likely as uninfected women
to have a heart attack or stroke, and that was
from the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Again,
they're still working out this whole correlation causation issue, but
(13:41):
when they adjusted for heart risks like smoking, blood pressure,
and weight, they still found that women with HPV were
two point three times as likely as those without without
the virus to have heart disease. That's nuts. Yeah, that's
really scary, and and it's it's interesting to me that
all of these terrible things are coming about HPV, but
I feel like a lot of people still treated as
(14:02):
this like whatever. I mean, it'll clear up, and I
mean it does for a lot of people a lot
of times. Yeah, I think it's ninety of the time.
The your immune system will naturally work it out in
about two years. But it's just, you know, it's it's
those more dangerous strains that obviously are causing a lot
more problems for a certain amount of people. And one
(14:23):
thing that a lot of these doctors have pointed out
to UM is if they can understand the role that
HPV may or may not be playing, then they can
better personalize treatment. And especially with all these uh these
cancers that is being linked to it could possibly improve
cancer treatment. Yeah, exactly. Um. HPV infection causes this thing
called cervical displasia. So when you go to get your
(14:47):
paps mare and your doctor takes a look see and
things don't look right, um, you you basically have some
mild displasia. It could be mild, moderate, or severe. And
it's just when things to look right, there's some abnorm
lalities and the cells on your cervix. So if you
if your doctor finds that you have dysplasia, you have
a couple of options. You can get your well, your
(15:08):
doctor will want to have a culposcope, a coalpo which
is a closer look. Basically, they use this thing that
looks like a tiny set of binoculars. It's a microscope
that helps examine the volva, vaginal walls, and the cervix
for abnormalities and they might what to do a biopsy
to get an even better an even better look. And Caroline,
(15:29):
you mentioned earlier that it's so important for women to
get those regular paps, mirrors and identifying dysplasia. Cervical dysplasia
is one of the reasons why because it isn't cervical
cancer necessarily, and it might spontaneously regress, but um you
need to know whether or not it's going on so
(15:49):
that it doesn't develop into something worse. Right, it would
be terrible to just leave it alone and then have
it actually developed into into cervical cancer because some of
those I mean some of those cells could be pre cancerous.
UM and in a certain chunk of the population, it
can actually even after you have the displaysia taken care
of through through several different means, it can come back.
(16:12):
It can recur. Um. There are a couple different treatments
in the destruction and ablation category. You can have this
sounds like space age stuff. You can have a carbon
dioxide laser photo ablation, which uses an invisible beam of
infrared light to vaporize the abnormality and don't worry, you
get numbed prior to this procedure. UM. And there's also
(16:36):
cryocotterie which uses nitrous oxide to freeze the abnormality. Different
strategies are removal, slash resection. You can get a leap
procedure loop electro surgical excision procedure which uses radio frequency
to remove the abnormalities. UM. So, if basically the what
we're trying to say is if cervical displasia is identified,
(16:58):
doctors can take care of it. In about ten percent
of women, they they do have a recurrence of it.
But it again, it's just underscoring the importance of UM,
healthy sexual behavior and regularly seeing your kynecologists. Yeah, and
I mean there is definitely a reason to be optimistic
(17:18):
if you don't I mean, don't freak out if you're
kinda coologist tells you that they've spotted some displaysia because
the therapies that I just listed UM have been shown
to reduce the risk of developing cervical cancer by in
the first eight years after treatment. So it's not like,
I mean, you know you're not going to die if
you're okay, don't worry. Just keep going to your doctor,
keep going to that old doctor. So even though it
(17:42):
might might sounded like we we we've put reputting the
fear of God into everyone about HPV, I think it's
UM there's still a long way to go in terms
of maybe bridging the gap between public health needs and knowledge.
Because even in the US, even though the CDC recommends
(18:03):
routinge vaccination against HPV for girls and now for boys,
only of seventeen year old girls have been fully vaccinated,
compared to Canada, which has fifty one coverage. Right Canada
and the US are just two countries, according to report
(18:24):
from the Pan American Health Organization that they did in
collaboration with the CDC UM who have the HPV vaccine
as part of a national or regional immunization program. The
other two are Panama in Mexico. In Mexico only just
recently instituted UM a national program in September of this year.
Um AND data from municipalities representing a small amount less
(18:49):
than ten percent of the population in two thousand nine
indicated that two dose coverage was sixty seven percent. And
so they haven't gotten the data for how many people
have gotten the third dose. And there the challenge right
now because UM the vaccine is not cheap. I think
it costs. It's a three round shot treatment and it
comes up to over three dollars um and so it's
(19:13):
not it's not affordable for a lot of low and
middle income countries, much less low and middle income families
if they don't have health insurance. A lot of health
insurances will cover the HPV vaccine and the CDC UM
even has a program set up to help low income
families get vaccinations for adolescents and children. But um, you know,
(19:36):
there's still there's still a big gap out there, especially
in the United States. Right. I just think a lot
of people need a lot more knowledge. Um, you know,
everything that we've talked about has shown that, Um, HPV,
there's there's so much more to HPV than just than
just genital wards. I mean, it can really, it can
really work a number on you. Unfortunately. Yeah, and uh,
(19:57):
we should not be deceived into thinking, like you said,
at oral sex is somehow safer in terms of contracting
the most commonly transmitted s T I because it can
and does happen, which is why it is the most
commonly transmitted s T I. Right, safe sex, people, safe sex,
(20:17):
or abstinence. Um, And I say absence specifically because well,
it is an option, and be because we had a
younger listener right us recently asking why it seems like,
you know, we tend to imply that people are always
having sex. Well, maybe we do sound like that, but
I think that, um, we're just trying to do our
(20:40):
best to help educate people about scary issues that are
out there and that it would be horrible if you
did have sex. And we're not armed with any knowledge whatsoever.
So while we would love it if you would talk
to your parents, your guidance counselors, and your doctors, everybody does.
So you know, we're not telling you to go out
(21:00):
and have lots of sex or anything. Um, We're just
telling you to if you do, be smart about it,
safe sex practices, be healthy and all of that. Uh So,
speaking of a listen or male, our email addresses mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com. And I have
an email here from Scott and this is in response
(21:23):
to our episode on women on television, and he writes,
I was in second grade when Cheers premiered. I never
missed an episode. Who was this seven year old Southern
boys favorite character, the sports star, acute and lovable coach. No,
Diane Chambers quickly became my favorite character in all of television,
(21:45):
and I realized now was a template for how for
the way I would view women. Her humor, both intelligent
and sarcastic, her way of not letting anyone push her
around just because they thought they could. Come to think
of it, Cheers was full of strong, independent female characters. Yeah,
I'm really cheers. I enjoyed that one. Um So, if
(22:05):
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at how stuff works dot com is the email address,
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at mom Stuff Podcast, and you can check out the
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at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check
(22:27):
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(22:48):
are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stop Mom? Never told you?
From house Stop works dot Com. Hello and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And the day
(00:20):
that we're recording this episode about h p V and
the HPV vaccine. UH, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention here in Atlanta, Georgia, their Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices,
gave its thumbs up for boys getting vaccinated at eleven
years old and HPV treatment for boys can start as
(00:44):
young as age nine. And the CDC had already um
offered a blanket recommendation for doctors to recommend younger girls
to get vaccinated for HPV, and now they're saying the
same thing for for boys. The FDA had already approved
guards Sel for use, which is the HPV vaccine, one
(01:04):
of two FDA approved HPV vaccines. UH, they'd already approved
that for boys, I believe in two thousand nine. And
now the CDC is coming back and saying that that, yeah,
do it. Yeah, the more protection the better. UM. And
that's not all the news that we've seen recently. UM,
there's been a lot in the news lately about head
(01:26):
and neck cancers being on the rise because of HPV infections,
and a lot of that is coming from UM. I
guess more people are having oral sex because they think
it's safer than vaginal or anal sex. And so you're
seeing these infections pop up in the throat and the
you know, in the back of the mouth, on the tongue. Uh.
And this is why we wanted to revisit HPV. Um
(01:49):
Mine and I talked about gardens sill and the HPV
vaccination for boys quite a while ago, but since it
has been popping up in the news, and since it
is the most calm then s t I commonly transmitted
s T I. According to the CDC, it's always good
to talk about the human papaloma virus because there are
(02:10):
more than forty types of it. It is everywhere. UM
not to not to be all scare tactic about it,
but the chances of contracting HPV are frighteningly high, right,
And chances are you won't even notice if you have it.
A lot of people will not notice that they have
it because they won't get any side effects. They won't
(02:32):
get genital wards Necessarily, the strains of HPV that cause
genital wards are not the same as the strains that
cause cervical cancer and other types of cancer, So you
might just be passing it onto people and not even
know it. Right. Um, This is coming from the CDC.
They point out that most infected people don't realize that
they're infected or passing along the virus. And it's also
(02:55):
possible to get more than one type of HPV. And
just to put some numbers around this, uh, and to
freak out everyone listening, of sexually active adults will have
HPV at some point in their lifetime. And when you
break that down by different um age and gender demographics,
that percentage can go up even higher. I want to
(03:16):
say that it's something like women, um over sixty some
of them at some point will have come in contact
or contracted HPV. And right now, that translates to about
twenty million Americans who currently have HPV in an additional
six million who get infected every year. Right that is insane. Um.
(03:39):
And yeah, you know the milder forms, like I said,
tend to they can clear up. You know, your body
will fight off an infection but it's those scarier strains
that you have to really worry about, and that's why
it's so important for sexually active women to get a
cervical exam, perhaps mere every year at least, Right, And
that's also why there's been a big health push in
(04:00):
the past few years for girls to get Gardissil or
server X HPV vaccines UM. And it's a series of
three shots, and girls can get them from starting at
age nine and up to the h cut off is
twenty six years old. And the whole rationale behind starting
the HPV vaccines so early is to um to give
(04:25):
them vaccinated before they have any kind of sexual contact
with anyone else. Right, And that's caused a stir with
a lot of parents, a lot of politicians, because you know,
a lot of people are saying, I don't want this.
This is an innocent little girl. Why should we you know,
why should we think of her in terms of having sex?
You know, she's too young for all of that. But
the thing is, and one of the articles that I
(04:45):
read about this pointed this out, UM, is that a
lot of parents don't know when their kids become sexually active,
and so there's an argument that UM maybe go ahead
and protect your son or your daughter against HPV before
before they start having sex. And right now, Virginia and Washington,
d C are the only two local governments that mandate
(05:10):
I think it's only the girls, not the not the boys,
although that might change with the CDC approval that happened today.
They're the only two governments that mandate middle school age
girls to get the vaccine as part of the whole
Measles moms Fabella immunizations that they have to get in
order to attend public school. And Governor Rick Perry, who
(05:32):
was running for the GOP ticket, has come under fire
from some of the other candidates out there because as
Governor of Texas, he actually um recommended a similar mandate
for middle aged middletown middle aged girls middle school aged
girls in uh in Texas, which he since recanted. Um
(05:57):
talking about the boys though, since they are half of
the equation here. In February of this year, a study
was published in the New England Journal of Medicine showing
that boys and young men who received the HPV vaccine
appeared to be at a reduced risk of contract of
contracting the virus and developing general wards associated with it UM.
They studied about four thousand sexually active males between the
(06:19):
ages of sixteen and twenty six, and about point five
percent who received all three shots the full series developed
genital warts during the subsequent two to three years that
they were followed. UM. About two point eight percent of
males who received the plus CBO ended up developing warts,
and because of that efficacy rate, the HPV vaccine is
(06:42):
now on the American Academy of Pediatrics list of recommended
vaccines for boys, and one of the studies um lead
authors use this as an example. Um or I guess
the reason why the burden of vaccination against the HPV
and because it is so widespread, should not just solely
(07:03):
rest on girls and women, even though obviously cervical cancer
can only affect females, but cervical cancer is only one
of many things, such as genital wards or cancers of
the anus or penis that can also affect men. Right,
Joel Pelevski, one of the one of the lead authors
of the study, said that the burden of vaccination should
(07:25):
definitely not fall solely on girls and women. He does
say that the disadvantage of a universal vaccination program for
males would it would be costly. But also he says,
the most serious disease is caused by HPV, such as
cervical cancer, only affect women, and I don't like, I mean,
I get that, but I mean, where are the women
(07:45):
getting HPV? You know, if we vaccinate from both sides,
then hopefully everyone could be all around protective exactly, And
especially because a lot of these health links to HPV
um have been coming out lately, it seems like, yes, uh,
we should be taking more of a the two pronged approach.
(08:07):
For instance, earlier this year, the American Cancer Society identified
thirty five thousand new cases of oral and oral pharyngeal
basically mouth and throat cancers, and they linked that to
people who were already infected with HPV. In a study
published October three in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, found
(08:29):
that HPV is contributing to a growing number of head
and neck cancers in the US. Like we said, um,
these are a fair and gel cancers have been rising
since the nineteen eighties, and it could be that there's
this increase, like I said, increase in number of people
having oral sex because they think it's safer and so
I just think it's important that we reiterate that just
(08:50):
because you're not having vaginal or anal sex, you know,
just because the chance of pregnancy is lower, doesn't mean
that the chance of contracting a disease is lower. And
just to get an idea of of how large set
jump has been, uh, the virus was found in sixteen
percent of those nineteen eighties samples, and in two thousand
(09:13):
or sorry and samples collected after the year two thousand,
that percent has jumped to seventy two percent, which is
one reason why Doctor Kevin J. Collin, who's the director
of the green Bound Cancer Center at the University of Maryland,
said quote, it's very clear that this is becoming a
major epidemic, right. And Colin wasn't involved in this particular study,
(09:33):
but he's been doing his own research, very similar research
in Baltimore and has seen similar increases in these cancers
the past thirty years. UM. Dr Maura Gillison, the lead
researcher in the study, though says don't panic. There are
still fewer than ten thousand cases a year and not
everyone with HPV gets cancer UM, which is true, but
(09:55):
the cancers that happen are not pretty. UM. These are
a fair and geal cancers, tumors that occur in the
base of the tongue, in the area just behind the mouth,
including the soft palette, the tonsils, and the side and
back walls of the throat, and they can contribute to
breathing problems, changing and voice and all that. And unfortunately
there's no screening test for orro pharyngeal cancers UM. And
(10:19):
of those cancers, they're referred to as HPV positive cancers,
which basically means that doctors were able to identify HPV
strains in that person who also had developed cancer UM
and it was caused by a strain HPV sixteen, which
is a strain targeted by Gardasil and Server X. And
we should point out that those two FDA approved HPV
(10:42):
HPV vaccines don't target all forty plus strange strains of HPV,
but the most cancerous ones, the most dangerous UM. Now,
what's interesting is that there are two types of or
pharyngeal cancers that doctors and researchers have identified, that caused
by alcohol and tobacco and those caused by HPV, And
(11:04):
of those, HPV accounts for seventy of those cancers. So
it's not even like tobacco, smoking, whatever is causing most
of the cancers. It's it's HPV causing most of these
And part of that is because smoking has decreased so much.
Between and two thousand and four, HPV positive cancers increased
(11:26):
two hundred and twenty five per cent, while HPV negative
or pharyngeal cancers dropped fifty And that's related to probably
the reduction and smoking and tobacco use. But the silver
lining to this terrible, terrible cloud is that patients with
HPV positive cancers do live longer. UM tumors in these
(11:48):
patients tend to have less genetic damage and are therefore
more responsive to cancer therapies, and there's a sixty reduction
in the risk of death after these patients diagnosis UM.
And speaking of smoking, there was some news recently again
linking HPV two lung cancer, and this is coming from
(12:10):
the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and it found
that people with lung cancer were significantly more likely to
have several high risk forms of HPV antibodies already in
their bodies, kind of like what we were talking about
with the HPV positive cancers, the oral um oral fair
gel cancers. Right, and this was consistent across people who smoked,
(12:32):
who quit smoking, who had never smoked, So they took
that they took that into account whether you smoked, and um, yeah,
it was consistent for everybody. But the researchers did point
out that they weren't exactly sure what type of role
the HPV virus might have been playing. So that's why
I keep saying that there's been they've uncovered correlations, but
they're not exactly sure, um, what the causation might be,
(12:56):
So more research is needed. But there has been a
clear pattern established, right, there's a link, and um, the
researchers are calling for more studies to happen. Um. It's
not like if you get HPV you're then going to
contract lung disease in the next lung cancer in the
next year or anything. But it's just something that they
want to take a look at. And as if, as
(13:18):
if things couldn't get even worse, there was a story
from the New York Times that I found it yesterday, UM,
reporting on a study finding that women infected with HPV
or two to three times as likely as uninfected women
to have a heart attack or stroke, and that was
from the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Again,
they're still working out this whole correlation causation issue, but
(13:41):
when they adjusted for heart risks like smoking, blood pressure,
and weight, they still found that women with HPV were
two point three times as likely as those without without
the virus to have heart disease. That's nuts. Yeah, that's
really scary, and and it's it's interesting to me that
all of these terrible things are coming about HPV, but
I feel like a lot of people still treated as
(14:02):
this like whatever. I mean, it'll clear up, and I
mean it does for a lot of people a lot
of times. Yeah, I think it's ninety of the time.
The your immune system will naturally work it out in
about two years. But it's just, you know, it's it's
those more dangerous strains that obviously are causing a lot
more problems for a certain amount of people. And one
(14:23):
thing that a lot of these doctors have pointed out
to UM is if they can understand the role that
HPV may or may not be playing, then they can
better personalize treatment. And especially with all these uh these
cancers that is being linked to it could possibly improve
cancer treatment. Yeah, exactly. Um. HPV infection causes this thing
called cervical displasia. So when you go to get your
(14:47):
paps mare and your doctor takes a look see and
things don't look right, um, you you basically have some
mild displasia. It could be mild, moderate, or severe. And
it's just when things to look right, there's some abnorm
lalities and the cells on your cervix. So if you
if your doctor finds that you have dysplasia, you have
a couple of options. You can get your well, your
(15:08):
doctor will want to have a culposcope, a coalpo which
is a closer look. Basically, they use this thing that
looks like a tiny set of binoculars. It's a microscope
that helps examine the volva, vaginal walls, and the cervix
for abnormalities and they might what to do a biopsy
to get an even better an even better look. And Caroline,
(15:29):
you mentioned earlier that it's so important for women to
get those regular paps, mirrors and identifying dysplasia. Cervical dysplasia
is one of the reasons why because it isn't cervical
cancer necessarily, and it might spontaneously regress, but um you
need to know whether or not it's going on so
(15:49):
that it doesn't develop into something worse. Right, it would
be terrible to just leave it alone and then have
it actually developed into into cervical cancer because some of
those I mean some of those cells could be pre cancerous.
UM and in a certain chunk of the population, it
can actually even after you have the displaysia taken care
of through through several different means, it can come back.
(16:12):
It can recur. Um. There are a couple different treatments
in the destruction and ablation category. You can have this
sounds like space age stuff. You can have a carbon
dioxide laser photo ablation, which uses an invisible beam of
infrared light to vaporize the abnormality and don't worry, you
get numbed prior to this procedure. UM. And there's also
(16:36):
cryocotterie which uses nitrous oxide to freeze the abnormality. Different
strategies are removal, slash resection. You can get a leap
procedure loop electro surgical excision procedure which uses radio frequency
to remove the abnormalities. UM. So, if basically the what
we're trying to say is if cervical displasia is identified,
(16:58):
doctors can take care of it. In about ten percent
of women, they they do have a recurrence of it.
But it again, it's just underscoring the importance of UM,
healthy sexual behavior and regularly seeing your kynecologists. Yeah, and
I mean there is definitely a reason to be optimistic
(17:18):
if you don't I mean, don't freak out if you're
kinda coologist tells you that they've spotted some displaysia because
the therapies that I just listed UM have been shown
to reduce the risk of developing cervical cancer by in
the first eight years after treatment. So it's not like,
I mean, you know you're not going to die if
you're okay, don't worry. Just keep going to your doctor,
keep going to that old doctor. So even though it
(17:42):
might might sounded like we we we've put reputting the
fear of God into everyone about HPV, I think it's
UM there's still a long way to go in terms
of maybe bridging the gap between public health needs and knowledge.
Because even in the US, even though the CDC recommends
(18:03):
routinge vaccination against HPV for girls and now for boys,
only of seventeen year old girls have been fully vaccinated,
compared to Canada, which has fifty one coverage. Right Canada
and the US are just two countries, according to report
(18:24):
from the Pan American Health Organization that they did in
collaboration with the CDC UM who have the HPV vaccine
as part of a national or regional immunization program. The
other two are Panama in Mexico. In Mexico only just
recently instituted UM a national program in September of this year.
Um AND data from municipalities representing a small amount less
(18:49):
than ten percent of the population in two thousand nine
indicated that two dose coverage was sixty seven percent. And
so they haven't gotten the data for how many people
have gotten the third dose. And there the challenge right
now because UM the vaccine is not cheap. I think
it costs. It's a three round shot treatment and it
comes up to over three dollars um and so it's
(19:13):
not it's not affordable for a lot of low and
middle income countries, much less low and middle income families
if they don't have health insurance. A lot of health
insurances will cover the HPV vaccine and the CDC UM
even has a program set up to help low income
families get vaccinations for adolescents and children. But um, you know,
(19:36):
there's still there's still a big gap out there, especially
in the United States. Right. I just think a lot
of people need a lot more knowledge. Um, you know,
everything that we've talked about has shown that, Um, HPV,
there's there's so much more to HPV than just than
just genital wards. I mean, it can really, it can
really work a number on you. Unfortunately. Yeah, and uh,
(19:57):
we should not be deceived into thinking, like you said,
at oral sex is somehow safer in terms of contracting
the most commonly transmitted s T I because it can
and does happen, which is why it is the most
commonly transmitted s T I. Right, safe sex, people, safe sex,
(20:17):
or abstinence. Um, And I say absence specifically because well,
it is an option, and be because we had a
younger listener right us recently asking why it seems like,
you know, we tend to imply that people are always
having sex. Well, maybe we do sound like that, but
I think that, um, we're just trying to do our
(20:40):
best to help educate people about scary issues that are
out there and that it would be horrible if you
did have sex. And we're not armed with any knowledge whatsoever.
So while we would love it if you would talk
to your parents, your guidance counselors, and your doctors, everybody does.
So you know, we're not telling you to go out
(21:00):
and have lots of sex or anything. Um, We're just
telling you to if you do, be smart about it,
safe sex practices, be healthy and all of that. Uh So,
speaking of a listen or male, our email addresses mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com. And I have
an email here from Scott and this is in response
(21:23):
to our episode on women on television, and he writes,
I was in second grade when Cheers premiered. I never
missed an episode. Who was this seven year old Southern
boys favorite character, the sports star, acute and lovable coach. No,
Diane Chambers quickly became my favorite character in all of television,
(21:45):
and I realized now was a template for how for
the way I would view women. Her humor, both intelligent
and sarcastic, her way of not letting anyone push her
around just because they thought they could. Come to think
of it, Cheers was full of strong, independent female characters. Yeah,
I'm really cheers. I enjoyed that one. Um So, if
(22:05):
you have any thoughts to send our way, Mom Stuff
at how stuff works dot com is the email address,
and you can find us over on Facebook and Twitter
at mom Stuff Podcast, and you can check out the
blog during the week It's stuff Mom Never told you
at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check
(22:27):
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works iPhone
app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to
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(22:48):
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