Herd immunity of large scale HPV vaccination : a systematic review

Abstract

Human papillomavirus (HPV) has a high prevalence among the population, and brings an enormous health impact and burden to the public. Vaccines have been developed in recent years, and their efficacy has been noted in many studies. Although there is much theoretical research conducted worldwide on the indirect protective effect of HPV vaccines to the unvaccinated population, convincing evidence on real world settings is still to be found. This systematic review recruits studies from two databases, PubMed and MEDLINE ovidSP and is intended to examine herd protection on community levels. 5 studies are included and the conclusion suggests that the herd protection is most significant among the sexually active young population, whereas it doesn’t seem to benefit people of older age. Therefore, follow up studies in the future are still needed to evaluate the herd immunity among the old age groups.