Parents, if you're worried that your son or daughter may be involved in risky sexual activities more after an HPV vaccination, then this new study may reduce your fears somewhat.
According to a new study, girls and boys who receive their HPV vaccine are no more than sexually active or involved in risky sexual behaviors than those who didn't receive any. This is the finding of McGill University researchers led by Leah M. Smith. In her e-mail to Reuters, she mentioned that although there was already a previous study about it, it was small and the conclusion was that there's no link between increase in sexual activity and HPV vaccine.
For the study, the team used the information found in Ontario health databases, wherein they identified over 125,000 girls, about 50% of whom were already candidates for the vaccine. In Canada, starting in 2007, girls who are at least 13 years old or already in grade 8, may already receive 3 doses of the vaccine. The rest of the girls completed the grade without receiving any. By the time they were already in grades 10 to 12, around 10,000 of these girls without vaccines became pregnant while about 6,000 acquired a sexually transmitted disease. Meanwhile, around the same percentage of girls who had been vaccinated experienced pregnancy and/or contracted STI. Simply put, there's not much difference when we talk about statistics.
The researchers would also like to point out that some studies were just too focused on perception rather than actual results on the effect of the vaccine on sexual behavior. Some of them, moreover, depended on self-reports, which may only be susceptible to bias.
Ever since it was launched, parents and the church have been greatly concerned on its possibility to encourage more teens to become involved sexually, especially pursue very risky sexual activities.
