Dear Colleagues,
June is Men’s Health Awareness Month. Whether or not you provide direct care for men, you can play an important role in one aspect of men’s health: working to eliminate HPV-associated cancers. According to the CDC, about 15,800 men in the United States are diagnosed each year with HPV-associated cancers.¹ Eighty percent of these men are found to have oropharyngeal cancer (base of tongue, tonsils, pharynx) and 20% are found to have penile, rectal, or anal cancer.
These cancers typically develop slowly over several years or even decades after HPV infection occurs. According to the CDC, with respect to HPV-associated cancers in men, the median age at diagnosis was 61 years for oropharyngeal cancer, 69 years for penile cancer, and 59 years for anal cancer.² Most men with recently diagnosed HPV-associated cancers did not have the HPV vaccine (approved for use in males in 2009) available to them to prevent infection when they first became sexually active as adolescents or young adults.
Today we have an HPV vaccine approved for males and females that prevents infection by all seven of the high-risk HPV types associated with cancer, as well as the two low-risk types of HPV responsible for genital warts. Although HPV vaccination rates are improving, those in males continue to lag behind those in females: According to 2017 CDC data, 53.1% of girls aged 13-17 were up to date with the recommended HPV vaccination series, as compared with 44.3% of boys aged 13-17.³
Current recommendations for males include routine vaccination at age 11 or 12.⁴ Catch-up vaccination is recommended for males aged 13-21 who have not completed the vaccine series. In addition, vaccination is recommended through age 26 for males not adequately vaccinated previously who fall into any of these categories: men who have sex with men, individuals who are transgender, and individuals who have certain immunocompromising conditions.