High-Value Program Involves Less Frequent Screens After HPV Vaccination

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 4, 2026 (HealthDay News) — For women who are vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV) by age 30 years, a high-value screening program likely involves less frequent screening, according to a study published online Feb. 3 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Kine Pedersen, Ph.D., from the University of Oslo in Norway, and colleagues examined the cost-effectiveness and harm-benefit tradeoffs of adapting cervical cancer (CC) screening strategies on the basis of age at HPV vaccination in an individual mathematical modeling study involving hypothetical cohorts of women vaccinated in different age groups (12, 13 to 15, 16 to 18, 19 to 21, 22 to 24, 25 to 27, and 28 to 30 years) with bivalent or nonavalent vaccines.

The researchers found that less frequent screening with longer intervals between screening than the currently recommended five-year interval was consistently preferred at the threshold of $55,000 per quality-adjusted life-year for all vaccination age groups and both vaccines, but there was variation seen in the preferred strategy by age at vaccination in the base-case analysis. Preferred strategies involved screening every 15 to 25 years for women vaccinated between ages 12 and 24 years, resulting in screening two or three times per lifetime. In a sensitivity analysis, under imperfect screening adherence and in scenarios that excluded bivalent vaccine cross-production, less frequent screening remained a preferred strategy.

“Policymakers should consider changing screening guidelines because of the expected vaccine-derived protection against CC,” the authors write. “Successful implementation requires sustained screening participation among eligible women as the frequency of CC screening decreases.”

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