With cancer-causing HPVs depleted by vaccination, research suggests it’s time to reevaluate screening strategies

The vaccine against human papillomaviruses (HPVs) works, successfully preventing infections that cause genital warts, cervical cancer, and some other cancers related to the anus, genitals, head, and neck. But what happens to the remaining HPV population when the vaccine wipes the most notorious cancer-causing HPVs out of the picture? Other types of HPVs seem to fill the vacancy, researchers report November 8 in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.