Talking about a virus is all a lot of us seem to be doing at the moment. We’re happy enough chatting away about COVID-19 and other common viruses like the cold or flu, so why is there so little conversation about HPV? You may have heard about HPV, human papillomavirus, as the virus linked to cancer. Cervical cancer is the type most strongly linked to HPV infection, but HPV can also cause cancer of the anus, penis, vagina and vulva, and some types of mouth and throat cancers. But although HPV can cause cancer, having HPV doesn’t mean you have or will definitely get cancer. Although not everyon ..read more

The soft thud as once every few years a cervical screening invite lands on the doormat. A gentle reminder to book a cervical screening appointment, should it be wanted. But for transgender men or non-binary people assigned female at birth, this invite may not be automatic and getting access to this service can be much more difficult at every step of the way. “LGBTQ+ people in general, and particularly trans people face a lot of inequalities with regards to their health,” says Dr Alison May Berner, a cancer specialist at the Cancer Research UK Barts Centre and part time registrar in adult gend ..read more

Last year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced an ambitious plan: to create a ‘cervical cancer-free future’. The potential reward is huge. If we succeed, cervical cancer will become the first cancer to be ‘eliminated’ on this scale. But right now, around the world, someone dies every 2 minutes from cervical cancer, with lower resource countries more heavily impacted by the disease. How do we get from figures like that to a world where cervical cancer is ‘no longer a public health problem’? And why cervical cancer in particular? To help us unpick the strategy, we spoke to Professor P ..read more

Long awaited study results have confirmed that the quadrivalent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine substantially reduces invasive cervical cancer risk. Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study followed over 1.5 million girls and women in Sweden up to 11 years and found that the risk of cervical cancer by age 30 was 63% lower in vaccinated women compared with unvaccinated women. Previous studies have confirmed that HPV vaccination, is effective in preventing HPV infection, genital warts, and high-grade precancerous cell changes in the cervix. But as the vaccine was only intr ..read more

Cervical cancer rates in Britain halved between the late 1980s and mid-2000s* but progress has since been ‘stalling and stagnating’, according to Cancer Research UK figures published today during cervical cancer prevention week. “These figures show how research has protected thousands of people in the UK from cervical cancer, but they also highlight a worrying trend that shows progress is stalling and stagnating, which could undermine this success” – Michelle Mitchell, Chief Executive, Cancer Research UK Thanks to research developing tests and tools that can prevent the deadly disease, such a ..read more

The social stigmas and myths surrounding the human papilloma virus (HPV) could make women anxious, including raising fears about their partners’ fidelity and putting them off going for cervical screening, according to research presented at Cancer Research UK’s Early Diagnosis Conference in Birmingham. “It is really concerning that there’s so much misunderstanding about HPV. It’s a very common virus and most of the time, it will sit dormant and not cause a problem.” – Sara Hiom, Cancer Research UK A survey of more than 2,000 women by Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust showed that the wide range of sti ..read more

Testing for human papillomavirus (HPV) infection as the first step in analysing cervical screening samples is practical and more sensitive than the current programme, a new pilot study has confirmed. The research, published in The BMJ, also suggests that HPV primary testing could see the time between screenings extended to 5 years. Plans are already underway to change the order in which samples are tested in the UK’s cervical screening programme. This would involve first testing samples for HPV, which is responsible for almost all cases of cervical cancer. Weilin Wu, health information office ..read more

More than 150,000 cervical screening samples were waiting to be tested by NHS laboratories across England last year, according to a report. A study from the National Audit Office (NAO) found that changes to testing arrangements led to a huge backlog that is still being tackled. It states that in March 2018, 152,742 samples were waiting to be checked and that by October, the figure was 98,000. Matt Case, Cancer Research UK’s policy manger, called the report “concerning” because “cancer screening programmes can save lives by detecting cancers at an early stage and preventing some cancers from d ..read more

While cervical cancer rates have fallen in the UK since the mid-90s, stats from the last decade show a slight increase in the incidence of the disease. And this has coincided with a shift in the age at which women are diagnosed. “The peak age for developing cervical cancer is now 25-29, which is a big change from before,” says Professor Peter Sasieni, a cancer prevention expert at King’s College London. Back in the 70s, cervical cancer incidence peaked in women aged 50-64. And according to Sasieni, several factors could explain how this has changed. One is the success of the cervical screenin ..read more

Cervical cancer screening is in the news, with some headlines saying that a new test can detect the disease 100% of the time and could ‘revolutionise screening’. But while the test itself could provide a new option for detecting changes to cells in the cervix, the reality is the test is a long way from being routinely used. And based on the research published so far, it’s not yet known if the new test is better than those that are already used. What is the new test? Scientists from Queen Mary University of London, funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and Cancer Research UK, d ..read more