Young girls should get cancer vaccine, panel says

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Girls as young as nine and young
women up to age 26 should be able to get Merck and Co.’s
Gardasil vaccine aimed at preventing a sexually transmitted
virus that can cause cancer, a panel of U.S. experts said on
Thursday.

In a complicated vote, the Advisory Committee on
Immunization Practices agreed to recommend the vaccine for
three groups — all young girls aged 11 and 12; girls and women
aged 13 to 26 who have not received the vaccine yet; and women
who have had abnormal pap smears, genital warts, or certain
other conditions.

At their discretion, physicians could vaccinate as young as
nine, the panel decided. The group also voted to include the
vaccine in the federal Vaccines for Children Program, under
which the government buys vaccines for uninsured or poor
schoolchildren.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices advises
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which in
turn advises school districts and other authorities.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration licensed Gardasil for
use in women and girls nine to 26 years of age earlier this
month. It protects against four types of human papilloma virus,
also known as HPV or human wart virus.

The idea is to vaccinate girls before they ever get
infected with the virus. About 15 percent of U.S. 15-year-old
girls are already infected with at least one strain of HPV,
said Dr. Carol Baker of the National Foundation for Infectious
Disease, who was at the meeting.

The approval could make for blockbuster sales for Merck,
with some analysts predicting annual sales of more than $3
billion within the next few years.

“Merck has already been shipping Gardasil since its
approval. We model Gardasil sales of $3.2 billion in 2010,”
said Dr. Tim Anderson, Senior Pharmaceutical Analyst at
Prudential Equity Group.

“I think this is going to be a great cancer prevention tool
but it is not going to be effective for about 10 years,” said
Baker.

This is because genital wart infection takes a while to
cause cancer.

PROTECTING GIRLS EARLY

Clinical trials have shown that a three-dose course of the
vaccine can prevent close to 100 percent of the lesions that
can become cervical cancer, and genital warts. Women get
regular Pap smears in most developed countries to detect these
lesions before they turn into tumors.

The virus also can cause much rarer penile cancer in men.
The HPV 16 and 18 strains of virus are responsible for about 70
percent of cervical cancer cases.

The CDC says more than 50 percent of sexually active women
and men will be infected with one or more genital HPV types
during their lifetimes.

Cervical cancer kills about 300,000 women worldwide each
year, including about 4,000 in the United States.

The CDC has no enforcement powers. It will be up to
insurers to decide whether to pay for the $125-a-dose vaccine,
school districts and universities to require or recommend it
and individuals themselves to decide whether to get it.

Dr. Cynthia Rand of the University of Rochester in New York
said she believed most people would get the vaccine. She has
started a series of studies on how many people would take the
vaccine if offered.

“The minority of parents we interviewed didn’t think their
children wouldn’t be needing it because their children wouldn’t
be having sex. But they thought it would be needed in the
general community,” she said in a telephone interview.

At least one state legislative group, Women In Government,
will be supporting the vaccine.

GlaxoSmithKline also has a slightly different HPV vaccine
in development.

Insurer WellPoint Inc. said on Thursday it would reimburse
patients for Gardasil.

“We believe this vaccine is a medical breakthrough that
will benefit adolescents and young women throughout the
country,” the insurer said in a release.

(Additional reporting by Ransdell Pierson)