• 5/16/2008
  • web-based article
  • staff
  • CBC.ca

There’s growing evidence that the virus that causes cervical cancer in women is also linked to cancers in men, leading health professionals to call for an HPV vaccination program for boys.

Janet Dollin, the president of the Federation of Medical Women of Canada, said public health officials in Canada should consider vaccinating both girls and boys against HPV.

“Start thinking about immunizing everybody who is at risk — it makes no sense to vaccinate only the girls,” Dollin said.

Recent research found more than half of some oral cancers in men are associated with the human papilloma virus.

While many Canadian provinces fund programs to vaccinate girls against HPV to prevent cancer, there are none for boys.

Researchers at the University of Michigan studied treatments for men with tongue and tonsil cancers. Their study was published Monday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

They discovered that 64 per cent of the tumours they looked at were HPV-positive. Dr. Thomas Carey, the study’s lead author, believes the virus plays a major role in the development of cancer.

“We believe that the HPV, which we know is capable of transforming cells in vitro, is the causative factor for these HPV-positive cancers,” he told CBC News.

The good news that emerged from the study was that those men whose tonsil and tongue cancers had HPV markers had significantly better survival rates and responded better to chemotherapy than tumours with other markers.

Almost all of the HPV-positive tumours responded well to initial chemotherapy and 78 per cent of those patients survived without having to undergo surgery. Only four of 15 patients with other markers survived.

‘And the point is that it’s preventable’

HPV is a sexually transmitted virus, with some strains of HPV having been shown to cause cervical cancer, leading to mass vaccinations of Canadian girls and women.

Currently, five provinces are funding programs that aim to prevent cancer by vaccinating girls before they become sexually active.

However, while cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women, oral cancers linked to HPV are estimated to affect a relatively small number of men — hundreds a year in Canada.

HPV is also known to cause genital warts in men.

Dollin, a family doctor in Ottawa, has no time for the argument that vaccinating all boys would be too expensive.

“Tell that to the boys or the men who are coming into my office with warts on their penis. These are not pleasant things to come into the office to get treated with liquid nitrogen on the penis for warts — and the point is that it’s preventable.”

Health Canada has not approved the HPV vaccine for boys or men. But the company that makes Gardasil is testing it on men now.

Dollin expects that research will show the vaccine does safely prevent HPV in men too. She predicts that once that happens, some doctors will give the vaccine to boys off-label — without waiting for approval from Health Canada.