http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/ask-dmine-on-guard-over-gardasil-and-the-possible-diabetes-connection/
Happy Saturday, DiabetesMine Friends!
Welcome back to our weekly diabetes advice column Ask D"Mine, hosted by the esteemed Wil Dubois who"s not only living with type 1 diabetes himself but also an established diabetes author and community educator at a clinic in New Mexico.
This week, Wil steps addresses the crossover between diabetes and cancer medications, and the oft-unknown side effects. Read on...
Got your own questions? Email us at AskDMine@diabetesmine.com
Rebecca, D-Mom from California, asks: Is it safe for my type 1 son to get the Gardasil shots (for HPV prevention)?
Wil@Ask D’Mine answers: Yes. Next question?
Oh. My editors would like me to expand on my answer a little bit. OK, let’s start with some background. Gardasil is likely to go down in history as one of the great medical advancements of all time. It’s billed as an anti-cancer vax, which is true in a roundabout way.
But what you may be asking specifically about is the claim bouncing around out there in the world that this Gardasil might actually cause type 1… So naturally, for those of us already exposed to the joys of any type of diabetes, the question may be: What possible effect would Gardasil have on us who are already pancreatically-challenged?
Let’s get into more of the science nitty-gritty, before circling back to the diabetes aspect.
The vaccine protects against a number of strains of a common sexually transmitted virus called human papilloma (HPV), which in turn is the smoking gun in nearly all cases of cervical cancer on the globe. Cervical cancer kills nearly 300,000 women a year globally, according to the World Health Organization.
Gardasil doesn’t prevent cancer directly, but it prevents people from contracting, and thus passing on the HPV, which causes the cancer. By the way, HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States; experts estimate that fully 80% of sexually active adults will be infected at some point in their lives.
So it’s a chain of sorts: The vax prevents the virus, and if people don’t have the virus, they can’t pass it on, and if they can’t pass it on, you can reduce the cancer rate. This is why the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) added Gardasil to the list of must-have vaccines. The vaccine works on both men and women, so what’s not to love?
Well, there’s a minor social problem. The vaccine only works if you haven’t been exposed to HPV yet, so the best time to give it is before a person becomes sexually active.
Well before.
The CDC suggests age 11 or 12 for both boys and girls.
Naturally some parents and all the conservatives freaked out.
We don’t have time to get into that today. I’ll just assume that you’re an enlightened parent who understands that public health is a moral obligation, and that getting your son vaccinated now might prevent your future daughter-in-law from dying of cervical cancer. Your only concern, which is legitimate, is whether it’s safe for your son, given he’s type 1.
And again, the answer is, resoundingly, yes. It is perfectly safe for a person with diabetes to get the vaccine. Here’s why: Unlike most vaccines, the Gardasil isn’t made from the actual virus. Most vaccines use either a weakened strain or a “killed” strain to train the human immune system how to deal with the targeted virus, but Gardasil uses faux HPV in the form of proteins that simulate the appearance of the HPV virus. Very clever.
The bottom line is that there’s no way to get “sick” or to contract the disease from the vaccine. The common side effects are headaches and redness and swelling at the injection site, the same as for any other vaccine. Severe allergic reactions occur at the rate of about three people per million doses. Some people will claim this is too high, but it’s typical for a childhood vaccine and I weighed that against 300,000 deaths and found the odds acceptable. Our son has had the series of shots (there are three).
By the way, severe allergic reactions, if they happen, usually occur almost immediately after the injection, which is why it’s standard practice for the patient to wait in the doctor’s office for 15 minutes after getting a Gardasil shot. Oh, and for some reason, it sometimes makes people faint. Another reason for the 15-minute wait.
There’s nothing about having type 1 that would make it any more risky or make any of those side effects more likely to happen.
End of story. Except, of course, that there is a small but highly vocal set of people who got the Gardasil first and then the diabetes second. Many of these people blame the vaccine for causing the diabetes. Is it possible that a Gardasil vaccination could cause type 1 diabetes?
If you are one of those people who believe that it did, I suspect I’ll never be able to convince you otherwise, no matter how much data or logic I present. But here it goes anyway: If Gardasil caused diabetes—even rarely—I’d expect it to show up in the post-market studies of the medication. More than 170 million doses have been given globally. Two large studies actually looked at the rates of autoimmune diseased following vaccination, including type 1 diabetes rates, and found no difference between Gardasil vaccinated kids and unvaccinated kids.
There’s simply no evidence, not a scrap, to suggest Gardasil causes diabetes.
Diabetes happens. Often at the age children are vaccinated for HPV. One doesn’t need to cause the other. I understand the anger and confusion that follow a diabetes diagnosis. The desire to have something to blame, to attack. Something you could destroy to prevent this from happening to any other child.
The truth is that the roots of type 1 diabetes remain a mystery, but we now know that there are genes that greatly increase the risk of getting it. If you had these genes, could the Gardasil have at least served as a trigger? Maybe. But, so could the flu, mumps, or maybe even cow’s milk. We just don’t know.
Meanwhile, diabetes happens. Every day. In kids who got Gardasil and kids who didn’t.
And every day, women keep dying of cervical cancer.
Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.Disclaimer: As mentioned way up above, this is not a medical advice column. We are PWDs freely and openly sharing the wisdom of our collected experiences — our been-there-done-that knowledge from the trenches. But we are not MDs, RNs, NPs, PAs, CDEs, or partridges in pear trees. Bottom line: we are only a small part of your total prescription. You still need the professional advice, treatment, and care of a licensed medical professional.
Disclaimer
This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn"t adhere to Healthline"s editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline"s partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.
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