Increasing HPV vaccine coverage may decrease cancers among people with HIV
Key takeaways:
- Only two of the 10 countries with the highest reported rates of HPV-related, non-cervical, HIV-attributable cancers had vaccine coverage rates over 50%.
- Increased vaccine coverage could reduce cases by thousands.
SAN FRANCISCO — Increasing HPV vaccination rates could help decrease the number of cancer cases “attributable to HIV,” according to data from a study presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.
“We did a global modeling analysis and found that thousands of people living with HIV could be protected from cancers related to HPV if we achieve the WHO target of vaccinating 90% of the population,” Namwa Wongkalasin, BSc, a global health student at Imperial College London at the time of the study and current medical student at University of Birmingham, said during a press conference. “However, with recent cuts to global funding ... these targets can now be really difficult to achieve.”
To investigate the potential impact of reaching WHO HPV vaccination targets on HPV-related cancer rates, Wongkalasin and colleagues evaluated the burden of HPV noncervical cancers in people with HIV and modeled the potential impact of improved HPV vaccine coverage globally.
Researchers collected epidemiological data on cancer incidence from the GLOBOCAN 2022 database and data on HIV prevalence from UNAIDS 2022. They then used these data to generate an estimate of the number of cancers “attributable to HIV.”
Overall, the study showed that 29% of all HPV-related noncervical cancer cases in Africa may be attributable to HIV vs. just 5% of cases worldwide. After assessing data for anal cancer specifically, the study showed that 35,719 cases of anal cancer occurred globally in 2022, of which 12.4% may have been attributable to HIV.
The researchers also modelled the impact of broader vaccine coverage using vaccine efficacy estimates and country-specific HPV vaccine coverage levels from WHO. They found that only two of the 10 countries with the highest reported cases of HIV-attributable cancers had HPV vaccine coverage rates over 50%.
They wrote that if gender-neutral vaccine coverage increased to WHO’s 90% target, 6,854 cancer cases among people with HIV could be prevented, which would be more than double the number of cases currently prevented.
“This analysis adds to the consensus that people living with HIV warrant special consideration in HPV prevention,” the researchers wrote. “More research is needed on vaccine efficacy in people living with HIV to inform future analyses.”
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Wongkalasin N, et al. Abstract 165. Presented at: Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections; March 9-12, 2025; San Francisco.
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