Published 2 November 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b4525
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b4525

Letters

HPV vaccination

Inaccurate assumptions about oropharyngeal cancer

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The article by Kim and Goldie on the cost effectiveness of including boys in a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination programme made assumptions about oropharyngeal cancers that are inaccurate.1 The prevalence of HPV in oropharyngeal cancer used in the article (31%) is based on worldwide estimates,2 but its prevalence in the US, where the research was done, is much higher.3 4 Source data for the review article referenced by the authors give the US specific HPV prevalence as 47% (42% for types 16/18),2 5 and other more recent high quality studies from the US have found rates as high as 72%.3 Furthermore, a recent population based study within the Colorado SEER registry found an HPV prevalence rate of 79% for oropharyngeal cancers diagnosed after 1994.4

Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b4525

Erich M Sturgis, associate professor1, Kristina R Dahlstrom, doctoral student2

1 Department of Head and Neck Surgery and Department of Epidemiology, University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas 77030, USA, 2 University of Texas School of Public Health, Houston, Texas, USA

esturgis@mdanderson.org

Competing interests: EMS participated as a one time consultant to Merck in 2007 for a one day meeting discussing the role of HPV . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Cost effectiveness analysis of including boys in a human papillomavirus vaccination programme in the United States
Jane J Kim and Sue J Goldie
BMJ 2009 339: b3884. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ