Thursday, February 18, 2010

Gardasil effective at preventing anal cancer in men who have sex with men.

Yesterday at EUROGIN, Merck annouced results of a Phase III clinical trial of men who have sex with men. The study provided data which suggests that Gardasil is effective 78% effective at reducing the rate of anal intraepithelial neoplasia, a precursor to anal cancer. There's a pretty large confidence interval on the effectiveness percentage (roughly 40-90%), but the effect is signficant in any case.

In addition to anal cancer, HPV strains have also been linked to cervical, neck, mouth, throat, esophogus, penile, vaginal and lung cancers, as well as a variety of kinds of warts.