Canadian vaccination programs could switch to a 1-dose gender-neutral human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination approach and eliminate cervical cancer, suggests new modeling in Canadian Medical Association Journal . "Our results have important policy implications in Canada, and in other similar high-income countries evaluating whether to switch to 1-dose HPV vaccination," writes Dr. Marc Brisson, a full professor at Laval University, Québec, and director of the Mathematical Modeling and Health Economics of Infectious Diseases Lab at the Centre de recherche du CHU de Québec–Université Laval.
Countries around the world are looking at whether to move from a 2-dose to 1-dose HPV vaccination approach after a 2022 recommendation by the World Health Organization Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization based on clinical trial evidence. Human papillomavirus can cause cervical cancer and other diseases. Researchers in Ontario and Quebec modeled various scenarios based on 1- and 2-dose approaches to inform recommendations from the Canadian National Advisory Committee on Immunization and the Comité sur l'immunisation du Québec.
The group found that 1-dose gender-neutral vaccination could prevent a similar number of cervical cancers as 2 doses, if vaccine protection remains high during ages of peak sexual activity. "All 1-dose vaccination scenarios, even the most pessimistic, were projected to be a substantially more efficient use of vaccine doses than 2-dose vaccinat.