Giving Gardasil to Boys Not Worth the Cost, Harvard School of Public Health Study

Harvard -- Boston, MA -- Persistent infection with high-risk types of human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted virus, is known to be a cause of cervical cancer. Current guidelines prioritize HPV vaccination of pre-adolescent girls, which has been shown to be cost-effective in previous studies, but the value of vaccinating boys in the United States has been unclear. In a new study, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers found that if vaccine coverage and efficacy are high in girls, a universal recommendation to vaccinate young boys is unlikely to provide comparatively good value for resources, compared with vaccinating girls only.