When the diagnosis occurs, it is astonishment. In 2010, Guillaume, now 40 years old, suddenly learned that he suffered from laryngeal papillomatosis, after seeing his voice lose intensity over a few months, to the point of being voiceless at times.
Laryngeal papillomatosis is a rare viral disease that affects the vocal cords and is caused by an infection with the papillomavirus, the existence of which the young man was unaware of at the time.
3 to 4 operations each year
“It was a surprise. We asked ourselves: ‘What did I do to achieve this?'” he confesses to BFMTV.com
The disease, although it does not develop “a priori” in a cancerous way in Guillaume, is no less disabling for him. “There is no treatment available,” he explains.
“The only way to eliminate the effects is to remove the lesions with a laser,” an operation that he has been forced to perform three to four times a year since he was diagnosed, under general anesthesia each time.
The illness also had serious effects on the professional life of this hotel employee who had to increase the number of work stoppages before obtaining disabled worker status. A difficult situation to manage also in private life.
“You end up closing in on yourself” because you can’t have normal conversations with a group of people, he confesses.
Only 6% of young people vaccinated
“It is clear that if at 15 they had told me: ‘You have to get vaccinated,’ I would have done it,” he judges bitterly today, when a vaccination campaign against the papillomavirus begins this Monday, October 2, in universities.
Because, although cancer vaccines are scarce, there is one that can significantly reduce infections by the human papillomavirus, known as HPV, while more than 6,400 people develop HPV-related cancer each year in France, according to data from the International HPV Research Agency. Cancer (CIIC).
Although vaccination is recommended between the ages of 11 and 14, that is, before patients have generally been exposed to the risks of papillomavirus transmission, the vaccination coverage rate remains low in France.
Currently, according to Inserm, at the end of 2021 only 45.8% of 15-year-old girls and 6% of boys of the same age were vaccinated against HPV. Therefore, vaccination of young boys is especially low.
“Too associated with women”
For Laurence Rouloff, president of the charitable association for research on the human papillomavirus “Akuma”, this low vaccination rate among children is explained, first of all, by the lack of knowledge on the subject.
“We associate the HPV vaccine too much with women’s cancer,” she told BFMTV.com.
She herself remembers the reactions in class when she launched, with her association, its first awareness sessions on the topic in universities, in 2021.
“The 3rd grade children were surprised to learn that they were also affected. They knew they were carriers and could potentially transmit it, but they thought HPV was cervical cancer,” he explains.
“I didn’t know it also existed for children”
Resident of Seine-et-Marne, Delphine, a plastic arts teacher and mother of a 14-year-old teenager, confesses that she also believed for a long time that her son Louis (name has been changed) was not worried. .
“I knew about the existence of the vaccine for girls, but I didn’t know that it also existed for boys,” she concedes to BFMTV.com, indicating that she found out about the vaccine during an informal conversation with her sister, a journalist.
He quickly decides to talk about it with Louis, who immediately opens up to the idea. “It was obvious,” he says, indicating that he wanted to “empower him as a child and future man in front of his future partners.” Thus, the third grader received a first dose six months ago and the second at the beginning of the school year in September.
Not just cervical cancer
In fact, contrary to preconceived ideas, the HPV vaccine does not only prevent cervical cancer. It also helps fight oral cancers such as throat or tonsil cancer, cancers of the penis, anus or even the vulva and vagina.
Therefore, men can also be affected and the phenomenon would even be massive. Almost a third of men over 15 years of age (31%) are carriers of some type of HPV, according to a study published in the medical journal The lancetpublished on August 16 and carried out in 35 countries, and 21% of them are carriers of high-risk HPV, which favors the development of tumors.
“We haven’t talked about it enough,” Professor Norbert Ifrah, president of the National Cancer Institute (INC), admits to BFMTV.com on this topic.
On its site, the National Academy of Medicine also emphasizes that the insufficiency of vaccination among children is partly explained by the “10-year strategy to combat cancer (2021-2030) focused mainly on the prevention of cervical cancer, so it is limited to girls.” In France, vaccination has been officially recommended since 2007 for girls, but only since 2021 for boys.
“Vaccination coverage” necessary
In addition, the prevention of uterine cancer also worries children, and then adult men.
“When we recommend vaccinating children, it is first of all to protect them, but also to protect the entire population, because to guarantee vaccine coverage it is necessary to vaccinate more than 50% of the population,” explains Professor Norbert Ifrah.
For both men and women, the HPV vaccine seems essential to try to stop the spread of papillomavirus infections, especially because “the condom (which) is very effective against AIDS and STIs (sexually transmitted infections) , is not enough against HPV. , remembers the doctor. In fact, HPV can be transmitted by simple skin-to-skin contact.
All interested men
Another cliché, which may have contributed to low vaccination coverage, is the idea that it does not affect all men.
“For a long time it was believed that vaccinating children was reserved for men who have sex with men. We must question this idea,” insists the president of the INC.
By recommending catch-up vaccination up to age 26 for men who have sex with men, and only up to age 19 for the rest of the population, health institutions could also contribute to fueling this idea, according to the doctor. .
Challenging a preconceived idea, the professor highlights that the majority of new cases of anal cancer do not affect men who have sex with men, but women. 1,532 women were affected compared to 479 men, out of 2,011 cases, in 2018, indicates the National Cancer Institute.
A complex screening
While the vaccination rate among men remains low, the need for vaccination is even more important among this population due to specificities related to male anatomy.
“We do not know how to detect HPV in children. We have no equivalent in terms of the effectiveness of the smear in men,” emphasizes Professor Norbert Ifrah.
Screening, systematized among women who usually consult a gynecologist periodically, allows for the identification of precancerous lesions. Not only can they turn into cancer, but each year, between 25,000 and 30,000 cases of precancerous lesions also require surgical treatment.
Source: BFM TV
