The Lancet Infectious Disease
Aug 2012  Volume 12  Number 8  p577 – 646
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/issue/current

Comment
Male vaccination against human papillomavirus
David M Salisbury

Preview
If high enough coverage for vaccination against human papillomavirus (HPV) can be achieved in girls and women, boys and men should be protected from infection. Hence, routine vaccination of male adolescents might not be cost effective. At present, only Austria and the USA have recommended routine vaccination against HPV in boys and men as well as in girls and women. No reports of the coverage among male recipients seem to be available for Austria, and the US recommendation is only newly made. The consequences of such programmes, therefore, cannot be assessed.

Review
Population-wide vaccination against human papillomavirus in adolescent boys: Australia as a case study
Melina Georgousakis, Sanjay Jayasinghe, Julia Brotherton, Nicole Gilroy, Clayton Chiu, Kristine Macartney

Summary
Female-only vaccination programmes for human papillomavirus (HPV) have been introduced in many countries aimed at the prevention of cervical cancer in women. One HPV vaccine is registered for male vaccination, but boys, men, or both, are not yet included in nationally funded HPV vaccination programmes. In this Review we discuss the different considerations relevant to the introduction of population-wide HPV vaccination of boys in Australia, which was the first country to publicly fund HPV vaccination of girls. Several factors need to be taken into account during decision making around the introduction of population-based vaccination programmes, such as local disease burden, vaccine efficacy, vaccine safety, and cost-effectiveness. Social and ethical factors are also important. Although evidence for men is increasing in these areas, uncertainties need to be kept in mind. The features discussed in this Review are likely to be applicable, with caveats, to policy making in other developed countries.