Two Doses of HPV Vaccine May Work as Well as Three, National Cancer Institute Study

Two doses of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine may offer just as much protection against cervical cancer as the three-dose regimen now being used, new U.S. government research shows. The findings stem from an analysis of data from the National Cancer Institute's Costa Rica Vaccine Trial, in which 7,466 women were enrolled, according to a news release from the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, which published the results on Thursday. The women were either given the HPV vaccine Cervarix or a Hepatitis A vaccine. Although researchers intended to give the women receiving Cervarix the full three doses, 20 percent of them got only one dose or two doses for a variety of reasons.

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