HPV Vaccine Is Said To Drop Childhood Respiratory Diseases
The human papillomavirus, or HPV, vaccine, initially designed to help guard against cancer appears to protect against a chronic childhood respiratory disorder, a new study indicates.
It's believed that the disease -- recurrent respiratory papillomatosis -- happens in children when HPV type 11 or 6 spreads from mother to child.
Some kids develop wart-like growths in the respiratory tract. The status can be life-threatening, and surgeries are usually required to maintain the airway clear.
In the United States, respiratory papillomatosis is developed by about 800 kids every year. This leads to annual medical costs of $123 million, according to a news release from the Journal of Infectious Diseases, which published the study on Nov. 9.
For the study, researchers analyzed Australian national data and found that new cases of recurrent respiratory papillomatosis in children fell from seven.
None of the mothers of the kids who were diagnosed with the disease between 2012 and 2016 had been vaccinated against HPV before their pregnancy.
The findings imply that new cases of recurrent respiratory papillomatosis are currently evaporating in children due to the country HPV vaccination program, the investigators stated.
In Australia, about 86 percent of 79 percent of boys and women have received the first dose of this vaccine which protects against four different kinds of HPV -- 18 and types 6, 11, 16.
The statistics are not encouraging in the United States, the investigators noted. Only 60 percent of teens aged 13 to 17 obtained one or more doses of the vaccine in 2016, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Two doses of this vaccine are recommended for teens younger than three and 15 doses are recommended for those aged 15 through 26.
"This is a world-first discovering of proof that the HPV vaccine has actually prevented recurrent respiratory papillomatosis cases," said researcher Dr. Julia Brotherton, a public health physician with all the Victorian Cytology Service at Melbourne.
"It is really exciting that we now have a way to protect against this dreadful disease," she said in a diary news release. "It adds to this list of strong reasons why you as a parent must choose to vaccinate your child."
Wealthy nations with higher HPV vaccination rates should conduct similar studies of the schooling plans, Dr. Basil Donovan and Denton Callander, from the University of New South Wales at Sydney, Australia, wrote in an editorial article.
"National and human embryo hesitancy remains prevalent, and unless those reluctant countries are convinced from the countless advantages of quadrivalent HPV vaccination, millions of dollars in health spending along with countless unnecessary episodes of death and disease will occur in the coming decades," they wrote.
