麻豆传媒

DURING the sexual revolution of the 1960s, a lethal sexually transmitted
virus spread among British women. The culprit was human papilloma virus (HPV),
now known to cause cervical cancer.

Researchers now believe that but for a simple historical accident this would
have led to a public health disaster. In the 1980s, just when the cancer should
have begun to appear, widespread screening for cervical cancer began in Britain.
Screening has saved thousands of lives every year.

HPV spreads between women via their male sexual partners. The virus was not
recognised as the cause of cervical cancer until years after the explosion of
infection in the 1960s. Researchers now know that the virus invades the cells
lining the cervix, causing malignant growth leading to cervical cancer 20 to 25
years after the initial infection, if it is left untreated.

Cervical cancer is now regarded as the most common sexually transmitted
disease among British women. It kills around 1200 a year鈥攎ore than 10
times the death rate from AIDS. But researchers at the Imperial Cancer Research
Fund in London believe that the death rate would be far higher had cervical
screening not begun in the 1980s

Peter Sasieni and Joanna Adams base their conclusion on an analysis of more
than 80 000 records of cervical cancer cases diagnosed since 1971. These show
that the risk of contracting cervical cancer soared among women who were born
after 1950 and became sexually active in the late 1960s. As the HPV epidemic
began to take hold, women born after 1960 faced three times the cervical cancer
risk of their mothers.

Had the trend carried on without screening, Sasieni and Adams estimate that
more than twice as many women would now be dying from cervical cancer. They
estimate that in future, screening will save the lives of as many as 5000 women
each year.

鈥淐hanges in behaviour in the late 1960s and early 1970s, following the
availability of the Pill on the National Health Service, caused a rise in
cervical cancer cases that is now largely being curtailed by screening,鈥� says
Sasieni. 鈥淚n ten years鈥� time, it will start to have an enormous effect.鈥�

The results of the new study are likely to increase the growing calls on the
government to make HPV testing a routine part of Britain鈥檚 cervical screening
programme. 鈥淚f both tests were offered to all women, we may be able to give them
the same level of protection against cervical cancer while screening them less
often, perhaps only every six years,鈥� Sasieni says.

鈥淭his new study underlines the importance of the screening programme,鈥� says
Julian Peto, a leading expert in cancer epidemiology at the Institute of Cancer
Research in Sutton. 鈥淚t is clear that if we did not have it, we would be facing
appalling numbers of deaths through the spread of this virus following the
sexual revolution of the 1960s.鈥�