Vaccinating girls, not boys, against HPV is best bet

October 9, 2009

Harvard University researchers have found that public health authorities would do better to extend the vaccination of adolescent girls against human papillomavirus (HPV) than to launch a campaign to get boys and young men vaccinated as well. The study, published in the British Medical Journal, comes as the Food and Drug Administration considers a proposal from Merck, the makers of the HPV vaccine Gardasil, to approve the vaccine for boys between the ages of nine and 15. (Los Angeles Times)