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Alternate HPV vaccine schedule for college students shows promise
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BALTIMORE — A delayed third dose of quadrivalent HPV vaccine at 12 months to accommodate college students’ academic calendar was noninferior to the standard third dose at 6 months, according to new data presented here.
“As you can imagine, the dosing schedule for HPV vaccine at 0, 2 and 6 months can be quite a challenge on the college campus, where there are such important academic situations as Daytona spring breaks and ski trips,” Richard K. Zimmerman, MD, MPH, of the University of Pittsburgh, said during his presentation. “It’s a challenge to get someone vaccinated in the course of a single college year, so we looked at what would happen if we spread it out over 2 [academic] years by delaying the third dose.”
Richard K. Zimmerman
Zimmerman and colleagues randomly assigned 220 males aged 18 to 25 years to a standard dosing schedule at 0, 2 and 6 months or an alternate schedule of 0, 2 and 12 months. The researchers collected blood samples for both groups immediately before the first dose and then 2 to 7 weeks after the third dose to analyze for antibody titers using a Luminex immunoassay.
The completion rate for the study was 93%, according to the researchers. The alternate dosing schedule for the vaccine demonstrated noninferior antibody responses compared with those in the standard schedule for all four HPV vaccine virus types, leading Zimmerman and colleagues to suggest that an alternate schedule could be used for college students’ convenience for completing the three-dose regimen.
However, Zimmerman said there was a larger dropout rate in the group assigned to the alternate schedule, which could be attributed to students not returning for another semester for any number of reasons, academic or personal. With that in mind, Zimmerman noted some caution in adjusting HPV vaccine schedules in the college setting.
For more information
Zimmerman RK. #S33. Presented at: 16th Annual Conference on Vaccine Research; April 22-24, 2013; Baltimore.
Disclosure: Zimmerman served as an adviser or consultant for MedImmune and has received grants for clinical research from MedImmune, Merck and Sanofi-Pasteur.