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Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine
Volume 11 (2010), Issue 3, Pages 223-237
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17486700903486613
Original Article

The HPV Vaccination Strategy: Could Male Vaccination Have a Significant Impact?

V. Brown and K. A. J. White

Centre for Mathematical Biology, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK

Received 4 June 2009; Accepted 13 October 2009

Copyright © 2010 Hindawi Publishing Corporation. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

We investigate the potential success of the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine, taking into consideration possible waning immunity and the influence of behavioural parameters. We use a compartmental, population-level ordinary differential equation (ODE) model. We find the effective reproductive value for HPV, R0e, which measures the threshold for infection outbreak in a population that is not entirely susceptible, together with infection prevalence. We study the effects of different parameters on both of these quantities. Results show that waning immunity plays a large part in allowing infection to persist. The proportion of the population not sexually active when vaccination occurs affects R0e, as does the rate at which individuals become sexually active. In several cases, infection persists as a result of an infection reservoir in the male cohort. To explore this further, we introduce male vaccination and find the conditions for which vaccination of males could be considered appropriate.