The impact of HPV vaccination on the prevalence of oropharyngeal cancer (OPC) in a hospital-based population: A cross-sectional study of patient's registry.

Abstract

Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines have been used for the prevention of cervical cancers, and their clinical efficacy has not been well established in the prevention of oropharyngeal cancer (OPC), in spite of the common viral etiology. Therefore, they are still not routinely prescribed for the prevention of this cancer. We have used the i2b2 data repository to analyze the interrelations between the hospital population, OPC, vaccinated patients, and patients that were both vaccinated and developed OPC. From a total hospital population of 1310334 patients, 23174 (1.76%) patients were vaccinated for HPV. One third were males, and two thirds were females. The total number of OPC was 4380 (0.3%) from the total population, of which 3013 (69%) were men. The highest prevalence of OPC was found in the age-group of 65-74 (37% of all cases). Four patients (0.017%) of the vaccinated group had developed OPC. Patients who were not vaccinated for HPV had a 19 times increased risk of developing OPC compared with those who were vaccinated (RR 19.3657, 95% CI 7.2655 to 51.6177, P=.0001). The risk was increased in both sexes. The RR in the male group was 23.8 (P=.0015, 95% CI) and in the female group 9.34 (P=.0001, 95% CI 3.0110to29.0121). The age distribution in the OPC group was significantly different from the age distribution in the HPV-vaccinated group (P=.0418) by Mann-Whitney test. 4376 non-vaccinated patients have developed OPC. The present study showed that HPV-vaccinated group had a reduced prevalence of OPC compared with the non-vaccinated group.