It's not an RCT, but those are good numbers nevertheless. I'll have to read the final study when it is actually published and dig into it.
"The new study analyzed 1.4 million medical records from 66 US healthcare organizations. Half of the research subjects were vaccinated against HPV from ages 9 to 45. The other half were vaccinated against other diseases but not HPV. Study participants were vaccinated from January 2011 to June 2024.
People vaccinated from age 9 to 26 yearsthe age range recommended by the American Academy of Pediatricswere 68% less likely to be diagnosed as having head or neck cancer, according to the study.
There was no statistically significant reduction in head and neck cancers in people vaccinated from age 27 to 45, most likely because these people had been exposed to HPV before being immunized, said Ching-Nung Wu, MD, PhD, first author of the paper and an otolaryngologist at Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taiwan."
Unlike Covid in kids, head and neck cancers can be quite deadly and clinicians (including dentists, ENTs, and primary care physicians) do not do a great job of diagnosing them early.
So this does bear watching as the risk/benefit analysis here may pay off (unlike the mRNA Covid-19 vaccine).
