HPV Vaccine to Curb Cancer rates for Gay Men.

Experts have called for the HPV vaccine to be offered to gay men as a way of curbing cancer rates.

The UK vaccination programme against the HPV infection began in 2008, but only among girls, on the grounds that this would curb the spread of the infection to boys as well.

But doctors at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Homerton University Hospital, and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, said gay men are more than 15 times as likely to develop genital cancer as a result of becoming infected with HPV.

While rates of anal cancers are higher among men who are also HIV positive - despite antiretroviral treatment - they are also higher among gay men who have not been infected with HIV, said the authors.

Australian research has shown that HPV vaccination of girls has had an impact on the rates of genital warts in heterosexual men, but that there has been no such change in prevalence among gay men

Recent research has shown that the HPV jab is effective in men, including gay men. The vaccine covers HPV 16 and 18, the two strains of the virus which cause most of the cancers associated with the infection.

HPV causes genital warts and is associated with a higher risk of genital as well as head and neck cancers

The vaccine is most effective in those who are not already infected with these strains of HPV, but evidence has shown that only a minority of young gay men are, and that the strategy to vaccinate a group that includes those who have already been exposed to these strains is cost effective.

Data from the UK's Health Protection Agency (now part of Public Health England) has shown that fewer than one in 20 men under the age of 25 has been infected by any high risk HPV strain.

In 2010, 17,000 gay men between the ages of 16 and 26 visited sexual health clinics in England.

Experts said that HPV vaccination would help prioritise initiatives to improve access to services for this group, who remain vulnerable to HIV infection.

'In the light of this evidence, and in the absence of universal vaccination of boys, the argument for introducing targeted HPV vaccination for [men who have sex with men] up to age 26 years is strong,' they concluded.