HPV Vaccine Does Not Encourage Risky Sexual Behavior In Young Girls

Getting the cervical cancer vaccine does not encourage young women to engage in sexual activity, have more sexual partners or forgo condoms, according to a recent study HealthDay reported.

Researchers from the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center in Ohio found that teen girls' beliefs regarding the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, whether accurate or inaccurate, is not linked to her decision to become sexually active or engage in risky sexual behavior within six months after vaccination.

"There are so many contributing factors to whether an adolescent decides to have sex or not, and whether they decide to limit their number of partners or use condoms," researcher Jessica Kahn, a physician in the division of adolescent medicine at Cincinnati Children's, told Reuters Health. "Getting a vaccine probably just plays a very, very small role in their decisions."

For the study, Kahn and her colleagues surveyed more than 300 girls between the ages of 13 and 21 who were getting their first of three HPV shots. Most of the women involved in the study were black and came from low-income families, Reuters reported.

Participants were asked about how important they considered safe sex to be, and how concerned they were about sexually transmitted infections (STIs). They were also asked about changes in their sexual behavior two and sex months after their next shots.

Based on the results, researchers found that the HPV shot does not influence girls' sexual activity.

"Whatever they believed, those key beliefs around the need for safe sex, and whether they're protected against other sexually transmitted infections, they were not associated with riskier behaviors," Kahn told HealthDay.

Researchers said concerns that vaccination of adolescents could lead to risky sexual behaviors, vaccination may be the reason vaccination coverage among 13- to 17-year-old girls increased from 48.7 percent in 2010 to only 53.8 percent in 2012 for one dose of the vaccine.

"We hope this study reassures parents, and thus improves HPV vaccination rates, which in turn will reduce rates of cervical and other cancers that can result from HPV infection," Kahn said.