Fifty-one percent of U.S. adolescents fully vaccinated against HPV

Slightly more than half of adolescents in the United States have been fully vaccinated against the human papillomavirus, according to a report published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

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Researchers analyzed data from 18,700 adolescents aged 13-17 years – 48% of whom were female – in the 2018 National Immunization Survey–Teen to discover that 51% of adolescents were up to date with the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, and 68% had received at least one dose of the vaccine.

There was an increase in HPV vaccination coverage from 2017 to 2018, but this was attributable to a 4.4 percentage point increase in males who were up to date, compared with a 0.6 percentage point increase in females.

“Although HPV vaccina­tion coverage improved, increases among all adolescents were modest compared with increases in previous years and were observed only among males,” wrote Tanja Y. Walker of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and coauthors.

The number of adolescents who had at least one dose of the quadrivalent meningococ­cal conjugate (4MenB) vaccine increased by 1.5 percentage points to 86.6%, while among individuals aged 17 years, coverage with two or more doses of 4MenB vaccine increased by 6.5 percentage points to 50.8%. Tdap coverage remained the same at 89% (MMWR 2019;68(33):718-23).