Last updated on May 9th, 2021 at 03:56 pm
The HPV vaccine and autoimmune diseases link is one of the enduring myths about the vaccine, which is regularly debunked by scientists everywhere. The so-called autoimmune syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA) pushed by an Israeli physician, Yehuda Shoenfeld. He claims that the HPV vaccine are causally linked to various autoimmune syndromes. However, ASIA is not accepted by the scientific and medical community (and see this published article), was rejected by the United States vaccine court, and should not be accepted by parents deciding whether they should vaccinate their children.
And, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Autoimmunity, human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines do not increase the risk of developing autoimmune diseases (ADs). More evidence that there is no link between the HPV vaccine and autoimmune diseases.
All about HPV and the vaccine
I’ve written about this vaccine 100 times – however, this might be your first bit of research into the HPV vaccine (known as Gardasil, Cervarix or Silgard), so I feel it’s important to give the readers a brief overview. If you’ve read it before, just skip to the next section if you want.
Genital and oral human papillomavirus (HPV) are the most common sexually transmitted infections (STI) in the USA. There are more than 150 strains or subtypes of HPV that can infect humans, although only 40 of these strains are linked to a variety of cancers. HPV is generally transmitted from personal contact during vaginal, anal or oral sex.
Although the early symptoms of HPV infections aren’t serious, those infections are closely linked to many types of cancers in men and women. According to current medical research, here are some of the cancers that are linked to HPV:
These are all dangerous and disfiguring cancers that can be mostly prevented by the HPV cancer vaccine. If you’re a male, and you think that these are mostly female cancers, penile cancer can lead to amputation of your penis. Just think about that guys.
HPV is believed to cause nearly 5% of all new cancers across the world, making it almost as dangerous as tobacco with respect to cancer. According to the CDC, roughly 79 million Americans are infected with HPV–approximately 14 million Americans contract HPV every year. Most individuals don’t even know they have the infection until the onset of cancer. About 27,000 HPV-related cancers are diagnosed in the USA every year.
Let me make this simple. There are only a handful of ways to actually prevent cancer, and drinking a blueberry-kale-protein shake is not one of them. On the other hand, Gardasil-9, the current version of the HPV cancer vaccine, protects teens and young adults from 9 subtypes of cancer-causing HPV, which leads to lower risks of more types of cancer.
So, if you’re looking for an effective and inexpensive way to prevent a few of the 200-250 cancers that afflict humans, Gardasil is one of your best choices. That why I call it the anti-cancer vaccine.
The HPV vaccine and autoimmune diseases study
The researchers in this recent study evaluated the risk of autoimmune diseases (ADs) over 6.5 years after exposure to HPV vaccines (quadrivalent Gardasil and bivalent Cervarix) in adolescent and young adult women using data from a French medical registry, Pharmacoepidemiologic General Research eXtension (PGRx). The PGRx is a surveillance database that helps researchers monitor the occurrence of rare or delayed health events that may be related to the use of medications or vaccines.
Let’s look at the details of the study:
- A total of 478 cases with AD against 1869 matched controls with no AD were included in the case-control study. A large majority of individuals in both the AD and control groups had received the quadrivalent Gardasil vaccine (95.3%). Additionally, over half of the study population had been exposed to at least one other vaccine during the 24 months before inclusion in the study
- The HPV vaccine uptake rate was lower in the patients with AD than in the controls without AD (10.9% vs 22.5%).
- Surprisingly, the group receiving an HPV vaccine had a more than 40% lower observed risk of developing AD. A similar lowered risk of central demyelination/multiple sclerosis (CD/MS) and autoimmune thyroiditis (AT) was observed in the HPV vaccine group. The researchers observed a statistically nonsignificant trend for reduced risk of connective tissue disease (CTD) and type 1 diabetes (T1D) after vaccination.
- No correlation was found between HPV vaccine exposure and idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP). The relationship between HPV vaccine exposure and Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) could not be established since no cases of GBS occurred in individuals who received an HPV vaccine.
This data not only show us that there is no link between the HPV vaccine and autoimmune diseases, but, in a few cases, seems to indicate that there is a higher risk of these autoimmune diseases in the non-vaccinated group.
Conclusion
The authors concluded:
Exposure to HPV vaccines was not associated with an increased risk of ADs within the time period studied. Results were robust to case definitions and time windows of exposure. Continued active surveillance is needed to confirm this finding for individual ADs.
This is even more robust and overwhelming evidence that HPV vaccines are not related to autoimmune diseases. And, for unknown reasons, it even seems like the vaccinated population has a lower risk of these diseases. The HPV vaccines, like Gardasil, help prevent some serious and dangerous cancers. I’m hoping parents begin to understand that there are few if any risks for the vaccine, with the substantial benefit of preventing cancer.
Citations
- Grimaldi-Bensouda L, Rossignol M, Koné-Paut I, Krivitzky A, Lebrun-Frenay C, Clet J, Brassat D, Papeix C, Nicolino M, Benhamou PY, Fain O, Costedoat-Chalumeau N, Courcoux MF, Viallard JF, Godeau B, Papo T, Vermersch P, Bourgault-Villada I, Breart G, Abenhaim L; PGRx-AD Study Group.. Risk of autoimmune diseases and human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccines: Six years of case-referent surveillance. J Autoimmun. 2017 Feb 9. pii: S0896-8411(16)30214-1. doi: 10.1016/j.jaut.2017.01.005. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 28190705.
- Hawkes D, Benhamu J, Sidwell T, Miles R, Dunlop RA. Revisiting adverse reactions to vaccines: A critical appraisal of Autoimmune Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants (ASIA). J Autoimmun. 2015 May;59:77-84. doi: 10.1016/j.jaut.2015.02.005. Epub 2015 Mar 18. Review. PubMed PMID: 25794485.
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