• 5/5/2008
  • Chicgo, IL
  • Monifa Thomas
  • Chicago Sun-Times (www.suntimes.com)

Though there’s now a vaccine against HPV, a sexually transmitted disease that can lead to cervical cancer, most moms aren’t willing to get their daughters vaccinated at the age recommended by federal health authorities.

That’s according to the first national study of mothers’ attitudes toward the human papillomavirus vaccine, or HPV.

The vaccine is approved for females ages 9 to 26. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that it be given to girls at age 11 or 12, when they receive adolescent booster shots.

Sex discussion seen as barrier
According to a survey of more than 10,000 mothers, only 49 percent said they would vaccinate a daughter if she were 9 to 12 years old.

But moms were more willing to vaccinate a daughter who was 13 to 15 years old (68 percent) or 16 to 18 (86 percent).

Study author Dr. Jessica Kahn said it’s not surprising that parents would feel more comfortable letting an older daughter get the vaccine.

“There’s sort of an underlying assumption among some parents that recommending the vaccine means that someone, either a clinician or themselves, will have to have a discussion that HPV is … transmitted sexually,” said Kahn, a pediatrician at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. “I think that’s a barrier.”

Parents and physicians also assume older girls have a higher risk of contracting HPV than preteens, so they may feel less urgency to vaccinate at a young age, Kahn said.

The problem with that logic, the CDC says, is the vaccine is most effective when it is given to a girl before she is exposed to HPV.

‘It was more about the cancer’
A recent CDC study found that HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease among teenage girls in the United States. Two strains of the virus are responsible for 70 percent of the approximately 10,000 new cervical cancer cases each year.

The vaccine, known as Gardasil, protects against these strains. But annual Pap smears are still recommended, the CDC says.

Since the vaccine went on the market in 2006, Merck has distributed nearly 16 million doses in the United States. A full vaccination is three doses of the drug.

Patti Smith, of Plainfield, got her daughter vaccinated at age 12.

“I don’t see it as giving her permission to have sex any sooner,” Smith said. “It was more about the cancer. It was one less thing to worry about for her.”