Julia M L Brotherton, Masha Fridman, Cathryn L May, Genevieve Chappell, A Marion Saville, Dorota M Gertig
Summary
Background Australia introduced a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination programme with the quadrivalent HPV
vaccine for all women aged 12–26 years between 2007 and 2009. We analysed trends in cervical abnormalities in
women in Victoria, Australia, before and after introduction of the vaccination programme.
Methods With data from the Victorian Cervical Cytology Registry between 2003 and 2009, we compared the incidence
of histopathologically defined high-grade cervical abnormalities (HGAs, lesions coded as cervical intraepithelial
neoplasia of grade 2 or worse or adenocarcinoma in situ; primary outcome) and low-grade cytological abnormalities
(LGAs) in five age groups before (Jan 1, 2003, to March 31, 2007) and after (April 1, 2007, to Dec 31, 2009) the
vaccination programme began. Binary comparisons between the two periods were done with Fisher’s exact test.
Poisson piecewise regression analysis was used to compare incident rate trends.
Findings After the introduction of the [...]