A study published in last week's New England Journal of Medicine looked at Stage II cervical cancer as the outcome and found that testing for HPV DNA was about twice as accurate as Pap smears. Pap smears will "soon be of mainly historical interest" says a Professor of Gynecology at Stanford Dr. Paul D. Blumenthal. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/health/07virus.html?partner=rss&emc=rs... Don't tell that to laypeople just yet. There are plenty of stories of fortuitous finds on Pap smears.

FDA balks on Gardasil approval for adults This answers the question "Hey if the cervical cancer vaccine is so great in teens why not offer it to all women?" The answer is in a nutshell "because it doesn't work so well." Perhaps there are biological reasons why older women don't respond so well to the vaccine but in any case efficacy wasn't good enough to convince the FDA for an approval. The other funny thing here is that there are older women on the Gardasil TV ad leading one to believe that the vaccine IS in fact approved for older patients when it really isn't.

The rate more serious reactions and allergies to the HPV or Cervical Cancer Vaccine seems to be a considerable amount higher than that of other vaccines given to children researchers in Australia report. A study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that although Gardasil is quite safe overall there is a need to watch for other possible side effects.