January 12, 2022 – A recent headline on the dramatic reduction in cervical cancer among young women as a result of the HPV vaccine does not tell the whole story of how vaccination can affect many other cancers.
Even with the good news of a drastic decline in cervical cancer, HPV is still linked to a wide range of other cancers, said Daniel Kelly, RN, PhD, co-chair of the European Cancer Organization’s HPV Action Network.
HPV has also been linked to cancers of the anus, penis, vagina, vulva and throat, which have been on the rise in recent years.
Because HPV vaccination in girls has already had such a profound effect on the incidence of cervical cancer, it is expected that universal HPV vaccination (for boys as well as for girls) will also lead to a change in the relative levels of these other cancers. says Kelly.
“These are difficult cancers to treat, ”says Kelly, and they are also difficult cancers in terms of the impact they can have on daily activities.
For someone with head and neck cancer, “you can take away their ability to talk, to swallow ”while penile cancer“it is certainly very detrimental to the men who are diagnosed. “
To highlight the impact of these cancers and raise awareness of universal HPV vaccination for both boys and girls, Kelly’s group launched a series of testimonials illustrating how doctors may initially miss a diagnosis of HPV-related head and head cancer. neck.
Rachel Parsons, 37, a mother of five, took six months to be diagnosed with oral cancer. She spent those 6 months moving back and forth between her family doctor and the dentist with a growing and painful mouth ulcer.
She is still considered lucky.
After an operation that lasted more than 9 hours, her cancer was removed. The following year, however, she went in and out of hospitals due to surgical complications, which burdened her marriage to her husband, firefighter Tim.
“We have moved to the stage of thinking: You know what, I do not know‘I don’t want to be with you anymore, “Parsons said.
It was only after they had a conversation with the minister who married them, and a fire charity organized care for the children so that they could have a few days away from their children, that the couple began to find a way to communicate.
“It was something that made us come back together after the cancer almost destroyed us,” Parsons said. “I know so many people whose cancer has literally ruined their relationship, so we were very lucky that we didn’t let cancer beat us.”
She is now campaigning tirelessly with the Oral Cancer Foundation to raise awareness of HPV and HPV-related oral cancer. “It‘It’s very important for people to be more aware of HPV, and I’m very active in trying to get people to listen, “says Parsons.
Another piece of evidence comes from Josef Mombers, who was diagnosed with HPV penis cancer 3 years ago, at the age of 57.
He says the worst thing is to have to tell his children and realize that “my grandson, who was 5 months old at the time, may never have memories of me.”
He says he has gone through a kind of process of grief and illness, and his treatment has had medical, emotional, social, professional and sexual consequences, especially since he had to undergo a penectomy.
“While sex should ideally be a mixture of physicality and intimacy, there is a clear shift to intimacy after such an operation… and both partners need to learn from scratch how to deal with the new situation,” he said.
And yet he remains positive.
“I would tell other patients, no matter how bad your prognosis, you still have a chance,” he said. “A 5-year forecast of 10% means just that: 1 in 10 will still be alive in 5 years.
“Only one, but there is one, so why can‘aren’t you
The third testimony is from Jill Bourdais, an American living in Paris and a former reporter who became a psychologist. She describes how 25 sessions of radiation therapy after she was diagnosed with anal cancer in the 1980s “really made me”.
“It was really exhausting and I ended up in the hospital for a week,” she said.
Although her husband was very supportive, she found that there was very little information in France, so she turned to the Anal Cancer Foundation for support.
The foundation was founded by Tristan Almada, along with his sisters Justin and Camille, after their mother, Flight, was diagnosed with stage IV anal cancer in March 2008 at the age of 51.
“This has already spread to her lymph nodes,” says Almada. This meant that the best treatment available at the time was “an obsolete chemotherapy cocktail from the 1970s.”
Despite the initial good results, her illness recurred and within 6 months “she disappeared”.
The devastation of her loss soon gave way to “anger and rage” that treatment options were so limited that it forced the brothers and sisters to launch the foundation.
They learned soon after that there is an “easy way to prevent what has happened to our family from happening again to someone in the world” through “universal HPV vaccination.”
This made them understand why an organization like theirs should exist in the first place, because in theory you have this nasty thing, HPV, which causes cancer in both men and women… but also thanks to human ingenuity, you have a vaccine. “
Therefore, since 2010, the foundation has focused on emphasizing universal HPV vaccination, “and we have a very clear ambition to rid the world of HPV and prevent all types of cancer caused by HPV.”
Universal vaccination: boys as well as girls
Universal vaccination means ensuring that boys are vaccinated as much as girls.
“There is no doubt that the effectiveness of HPV vaccination is greatly improved by vaccinating boys,” said Leslie R. Boyd, MD, director of the gynecological oncology department at NYU Langone Health.
“What happens without vaccination is that you have this set of carriers… and so, in order to achieve full protection of the population, vaccination of boys is crucial,” she said.
Apparently, the boys are not at risk for cervical cancer, but they face an “extreme risk” of developing head and neck cancer from HPV exposure, so they will “definitely benefit”, she said.
“From an epidemiological point of view, it’s clear,” Boyd said, “cervical cancer will be far ahead of head and neck cancer in terms of the severity of HPV cancer in the next decade or so.”
This, she explains, is due to the fact that HPV vaccination is “much more common” in women, while head and neck cancer as a disease “is much more common in men.”
“So there is a discrepancy and there is no routine screening for head and neck cancer, so for both reasons we can expect to see increases,” she said.