Results of a late-stage clinical trial indicate that Gardasil, an experimental Merck vaccine, prevented early-stage cervical cancer and precancerous cervical lesions caused by the two most common forms of a virus linked to those cancers.
Gardasil targets two forms of sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, types 16 and 18, which are responsible for about 70 percent of cervical cancer. Such cancers kill about 300,000 women worldwide each year, including almost 4,000 in the United States.
The trial, which was sponsored by Merck, included more than 12,000 women from 13 countries, aged 16 to 26, who were not infected with either of the virus types when the trial began. The ability to prevent onset of cervical cancers, at least for the short term, was reported.
