The latest Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting, under leadership of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), made new recommendations for HPV vaccine regimens.
Recommendations applied to HPV, serogroup B meningococcal (MenB) disease, hepatitis B, and tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis (Tdap) vaccines.
The HPV vaccine had the biggest changes in the recommendation. The vote encourages patients between the ages of 11 and 12 to accept two doses from the nine-valent HPV vaccine. These doses should be administered approximately six months apart.
"Safe, effective and long-lasting protection against HPV cancers with two visits instead of three means more Americans will be protected from cancer," CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said. "This recommendation will make it simpler for parents to get their children protected in time."
Previously, the recommendation encouraged the same patients to receive three doses in order to gain full protection from HPV infections that could cause cancer. This recommendation for three doses still applies to teens as well as young adults who begin the dosage series between 15 and 26 years old.
"Up until October, it wasn't FDA-approved to do a two-dose schedule of the nine-valent vaccine in the U.S.," Dr. Margot Savoy, AAFP liaison to the ACIP, said. "The evidence (supporting the revised schedule) was the same evidence the ACIP has seen during the past year; they just didn't have the FDA approval to recommend it previously."
