Just recently, a new vaccine has come out for girls 9 to 26 years old, targeting a few strains of HPV (Human Papillomavirus). The reason? HPV is a sexually transmitted disease that most women will get over the course of their life, whether they are aware of it or not. A few strains of this virus are responsible for most of the cervical cancers that plague women today. Even with the vaccine, though, women still need to get exams done, since the vaccine does not protect against all cancer causing strains of the virus.
Now, it seems there are genetic tests that may do away with the Pap smears that women are accustomed to getting once a year. The smears themselves are not terribly effective, only catching lesions about 50% to 80% of the time, and about 4% are ambiguous--no result can be determined from them. The reason they are so widely used as a cancer screening is that they check for lesions that take many years to develop, over which time, many smears will be done. They are also relatively inexpensive, costing about $20 each. This new genetic test, though, is much more effective in catching the cancer. With the widespread use of the vaccine, the number of lesions will also go down, and hopefully less women will get cervical cancer, thus the smears will become more costly on a per cancer case basis. This test not only tests for the DNA of several strains of the virus once (making it more reliable than simply looking at a smear), but it is much less likely to produce the ambiguous results. It does cost more, but Kaiser Permanente has found a way to cut the costs by giving both a Pap smear and the genetic test one year, and waiting another three years for the next testing, assuming both tests return negative.
With all these introductions of ways to prevent and treat cervical cancer early, the threat of this cancer will most certainly decline, and better tests will come out aiding in the testing of women. Our next step is to work on prostate cancer.
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