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Comment by heyflyguy | Hacker News Reader

Does it do anything for you if you're already infected but not cancerous? or is it merely prevention from infection?

There are many strains of HPV, the vaccine prevents several of the worst but not all strains. Even if you are already infected with one strain it makes sense to get the vaccine to not become infected with the others.

I want to know this too.

Gardasil is described as a prophylactic vaccine, rather than therapeutic, so no- it sounds like you would have to be vaccinated prior to infection in order for it to be effective. However, it sounds like there are therapeutic vaccines in development [0, 1].

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3586871/ [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30955915

"In those already infected, the vaccines are not effective." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPV_vaccine#cite_note-WHO2017-...

I've often wished I retained where I read it, but I read that in human trials in China, that in some test subjects, all warts on their body cleared. Also the researcher who developed the vaccine was my step-son's grandmother's next door neighbour.

That's not at all what the actual linked document says. From pg. 17/257:

"There is conflicting evidence on whether HPV vaccines are efficacious in preventing vaccine type HPV associated anogenital pre-cancer in women who had evidence of prior HPV exposure to the same vaccine type."

This section cites Miltz et al. (2014; PLoS ONE) and Lehtinen et al. (2013; Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology).

My impression is that efficacy against the same strain hasn't been demonstrated, but it's very clear that people infected with one strain (say, 6) can be subsequently infected with other strains. In that case, there's a partial benefit of the vaccine, since it'll help with the other 1/3/8 strains that the vaccine targets (plus maybe a few more, as there are also off-target effects).

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