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Background: In England, bivalent vaccination (Cervarix) against high-risk human papillomavirus (HR-HPV) genotypes 16/18 was offered in a population-based catch-up campaign in 2008-2010 to girls aged 14-17 years. These women are now entering the national cervical screening programme. We determined the impact of catch-up bivalent vaccination on their screening outcomes.Methods: We studied the overall and genotype-specific screening outcomes in 108,138 women aged 24-25 (offered vaccination) and 26-29 years (not offered vaccination) included in the English HPV screening pilot between 2013 and 2018.Results: At 24-25 years, the detection of high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN2+) associated with HPV16/18 decreased from 3 to 1% (p < 0.001), with estimated vaccine effectiveness of 87% (95% CI: 82-91%). The detection of any CIN2+ halved from 6 to 3% (p < 0.001), with an estimated vaccine effectiveness of 72% (95% CI: 66-77%). The positive predictive value of a colposcopy for CIN2+ decreased for both low-grade (p < 0.001) and high-grade (p = 0.02) abnormalities on triage cytology. The decreases in screen-detected abnormalities at age 26-29 were of a substantially smaller magnitude.Conclusions: These data confirm high effectiveness of bivalent HPV vaccination delivered through a population-based catch-up campaign in England. These findings add to the rationale for extending screening intervals for vaccinated cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of human papillomavirus (HPV) in cervical cancer prevention. It mentions about prophylactic vaccines that generate HPV specific antibodies which bind to the virus preventing it from infecting cervical epithelial cells. It states about strategies for exploiting HPV testing in cervical screening such as treatment of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) and informs that cervical cytology is labour intensive.