It was two months ago that Ashley, a KU junior who asked that her last name not be used, visited her gynecologist for her annual pap smear. Ashley had been getting an annual pap smear since her senior year of high school and each sample had returned from the lab free of irregular results. She waited for the same phone call she had received for four years, which would tell her everything was normal. But this year she answered the phone and heard different results: She had tested positive for human papillomavirus.

“That was the scariest phone call I have ever gotten,” she said.

Had she received the Gardasil vaccine before becoming sexually active, Ashley might never have gotten the phone call. Ashley said her diagnosis came as a shock to both her and her boyfriend. He was her first partner, but like most men, he was unaware he was a carrier and was not informed about the virus.

Kathy Guth, nurse practitioner in the Watkins Memorial Health Center’s gynecology department, said she frequently visited with students who contracted HPV. Guth said she diagnosed an average of four to five KU students with HPV every week.

“I’ve seen a Gardasil commercial but I didn’t know what HPV was,” Ashley said.

She said she didn’t pay much attention to the commercials because she didn’t think HPV would ever affect her.

The vaccine

Gardasil, a three-part vaccine designed to prevent HPV and cervical cancer, was introduced to the pharmaceutical market in 2006. Gardasil protects women from four different types of HPV: types 16 and 17, which cause 70 percent of cervical cancer cases; and types 6 and 11, which cause 90 percent of genital wart cases.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection. There are more than 40 different strains of HPV affect men and women. Ashley said her doctor informed her she had contracted a pre-cancerous strain of the virus.

Guth said women were more likely to notice the infection but that men contracted the infection just as often.

Ashley said she told her mother that she had HPV, but her mother asked her not to tell her father.

“‘I don’t want him to think his little girl is having sex,’” Ashley said, remembering her mother’s reaction.

Renee Carey, Lawrence native and mother of an 11-year-old girl, isn’t so sure she’ll have her daughter vaccinated though.

“I don’t understand why everyone is jumping on the bandwagon,” she said. “It’s just a big pharmaceutical campaign.”

Carey said that she didn’t see a reason to push more vaccines on her daughter and that she was leery that there was not enough evidence to support the vaccine’s effectiveness.

Physicians at Watkins, however, say the vaccine has been more successful than they anticipated. Patricia Denning, senior staff physician, said she decided to have her daughter vaccinated in middle school because she trusted the vaccine.

“I have encouraged both of my daughters to get vaccinated,” Beth Sakamura, a Lawrence nurse, said. Though Sakamura’s daughters are adults, she said she thought vaccinating young girls was a good idea. The Gardasil vaccine is available for women between the ages of 9 and 26.

The cost

Denning said Watkins offered health care to students at minimal costs, but coverage of the vaccine depends on individual health care insurance.

“It’s quite costly,” said Lisa Horn, communications director at the Lawrence Douglas County Health Department.

Horn said the health department had recently stopped offering the vaccine because of state budget cuts. Horn said the vaccine had cost patients $143 per shot and was too expensive to keep in stock.

“Any time there is a new product, insurance companies are hesitant to cover it,” Denning said.

Possible effects

Along with the price tag, Guth said some patients had expressed concerns about whether the vaccine was effective and wondered if there were any side effects. Gardasil lists a number of possible side effects including pain on site of injection, headache, fever, nausea and fainting. The CDC reported that one in 60 patients would likely experience a mild fever, but nothing that wouldn’t go away on its own.

Denning said there were always risks involved when receiving a vaccine because each patient reacted differently. She has seen an occasional allergic reaction and a patient faint, but she said side effects had not occurred more frequently than with other vaccines. Denning said that Watkins had been one of 17 test sites for the vaccine six years before it was approved by the FDA and that the health center had seen minimal negative reactions.

Courtney Jerome, Austin, Texas, junior, received the vaccine last year and didn’t notice any side effects aside from a burning sensation on the site of the injection.

Ashley said she recently started getting the Gardasil vaccine so she wouldn’t contract other strains of the HPV virus.

Since testing positive for HPV, Ashley has had to get a pap smear twice a year and will have to keep doing so until two pap smears come back normal. The strain she contracted could lead to cancer

“It’s just awful,” Ashley said. “When you get HPV, it’s a waiting game.”

— — Edited by Liz Schubauer