The Food and Drug Administration has approved a vaccine which is designed to prevent cervical cancer. The new vaccine is called Gardasil and it treats the human papillomavirus which if untreated, can develop into cervical cancer.
Thursday, the FDA declared Gardasil to be effective and safe which was good news for its producer, Merck & Co.
'It will be the first vaccine licensed by the FDA that can prevent a cancer that kills a large number of women each year,' Dr. Michael Keefer, an associate professor in the infectious disease division at the University of Rochester School of Medicine in New York told ABC News. 'If that's not a breakthrough, I don't know what is.'
There are at least 100 strains of the human papillomaviruses. Approximately 30 of them are transmitted sexually and roughly 10 of them can cause cervical cancer if untreated. This vaccine treats four of the 10 strains known to cause cancer.
Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are considered the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States. It is estimated that more than half of sexually active men will come down with some form of it at some point in their lives. The Center for Disease Control also estimates that by the time they reach age 50, as many as 80 percent of women will have contracted some form of the it.
For the vaccine to be effective, it must be given to somebody before they become sexually active. That will cause controversy as many in the medical community will say the vaccine should be given to pre-teens while others will argue that abstinence is a better way to prevent HPVs.
Approximately 4,000 women in the United States and 270,000 women worldwide die each year from cervical cancer.
