Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14529

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Silverman E.
Gardasil Grope: Merck Lusts After Adult Women
Pharmalot 2008 Oct 27
http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/10/the-gardasil-grope-merck-lusts-after-adult-women/#more-16973

Full text:

Never mind that a recent study found its HPV vaccine isn’t cost effective for women over 18 years old and that the FDA earlier this year rejected Gardasil for women between the ages of 27 and 45 (back story), Merck continues to push for widespread vaccination for adult women.
Over the weekend, researchers told the American Society for Microbiology and the Infectious Diseases Society of America that an aggressive strategy of vaccinating older women could cripple cervical cancer, which is traced to HPV.
Using a mathematical model, they showed that vaccinating women in the US by ages 12 through 45 against HPV could reduce cervical cancer cases by up to 55 percent for 45-year-old women, Reuters writes. The Reuters story, by the way, failed to note the speaker, Warner Huh of the University of Alabama, receives funding from Merck and Glaxo for consulting, research and speaking (look here).
The hard sell isn’t surprising, after vaccinations fell 33 percent in July and August compared with a year earlier and sales declined 4 percent in this year’s third quarter. Merck believes women up to age 26 were least likely to have been vaccinated during Gardasil’s initial availability. “We see tremendous opportunity,” Bev Lybrand, Merck’s senior vp of vaccines, recently told Bloomberg News. “We have a number of programs under way to get after these women.”
But convincing still older women may be difficult, since the recent analysis in The New England Journal of Medicine predicted that life expectancy gained by giving Gardasil to women older than 18 doesn’t outweigh the expense. The vaccine costs about $360 for a three-dose regimen. As noted last summer, though, Merck hopes to allay FDA concerns about vaccinating older women. Whether doctors and patients will be convinced remains to be seen.
UPDATE: We should note that Huh based his data on Glaxo trials for Cervarix, which is approved in Europe, but not yet in the US.