New Vaccine to prevent cervical cancer in the discovery

Between 2011 and 2013, the scientists recruited 167 women, ages 18 to 55, with newly diagnosed, high-grade pre-cancerous cervical lesions.

The women were randomly assigned to receive either three doses of the vaccine or saline injections over a 12-week period at 36 hospitals and private gynecology practices in the US and six other countries.

Of 114 women who received at least one vaccine dose, 55 (48.2 percent) had a regression of their pre-cancerous lesion, meaning their lesions disappeared or converted to low-grade lesions, compared with 12 of 40 (30 percent) who received saline injections.

Of the 114, 107 received all three vaccine doses, and 53 of them (49.5 percent) had regression of their lesions.

Among women who completed all three injections, scientists could find no trace of HPV in the cervixes of 56 of the 107 women who received the vaccine, compared with only nine of 35 saline recipients.

"In many of these women, the vaccine not only made their lesions disappear, but it also cleared the virus from their cervix," Trimble said.

"In most unvaccinated patients whose lesions went away, the virus was still present, and many still had low-grade lesions," Trimble noted.

"We showed that the vaccine may enable an immune response in a person whose immune system was initially not adequately engaged or was hampered in some way so as to let the lesion occur," Trimble said.