TUESDAY, Dec. 3, 2024 (HealthDay News) — From 2016 to 2021, there was a decrease in cervical cancer deaths among U.S. women aged younger than 25 years, according to a research letter published online Nov. 27 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Noting that the incidence of cervical cancer decreased during 2012 to 2019 among U.S. women aged younger than 25 years, Poria Dorali, Ph.D., from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, and colleagues analyzed cervical cancer mortality data for women aged younger than 25 years from 1992 to 2021 from the National Center for Health Statistics.

The researchers found that 398 cervical cancer deaths were reported between 1992 and 2021 among women younger than 25 years. There was an initial gradual decline of 3.7 percent per year in cervical cancer mortality from 1992-1994 to 2013-2015; from 2013-2015 to 2019-2021, there was a decline of 15.2 percent per year. During the same time period, the number of cervical cancer deaths decreased from 55 to 35 to 13 in 1992-1994, 2013-2015, and 2019-2021, respectively. Based on projected mortality rates, an estimated 26 additional cervical cancer deaths would have been expected to occur between 2016 and 2021, assuming that the trend from 1992-1994 to 2013-2015 continued.

“Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, HPV vaccination coverage has not improved and a troubling decline occurred (from 79.3 percent in 2022 to 75.9 percent in 2023) among the most recent generation of U.S. adolescents,” the authors write. “The findings from this study highlight the urgency to improve HPV vaccination coverage.”

Two authors disclosed ties to Value Analytics Labs; one also disclosed ties to Merck.

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