Accelerating cervical cancer control and prevention Nicolas Wentzensen, Mark Schiffman  The Lancet Public Health  Volume 3, Issue 1, Pages e6-e7 (January 2018) DOI: 10.1016/S2468-2667(17)30242-6 Copyright © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 license Terms and Conditions

Figure Cervical cancer aetiology and prevention approaches Cervical cancer can arise from infection with one of a dozen carcinogenic HPV types. Infection is sexually acquired, with a peak transmission of causal infections in late adolescence and early adulthood (green). More than 90% of infections are suppressed within months to a few years by cell-mediated immunity; the small percentage of infections that persist lead to typically slow-growing cervical precancers whose incidence peaks from approximately ages 25–40 years (blue). A sizeable minority of precancers eventually acquires invasive potential, and cancers represent a third peak increasing about age 40 years and extended over the course of decades (red). Prevention in high-resource countries focuses on the strategies associated with individual-level protection. In the alternative approach, individual efficacy is not the objective; but rather reduced endemicity is the target, which can be achieved without demanding maximum long-term durability of immune response. At the same time, introduction of at least one or two highly sensitive screens using HPV testing is targeted to the ages of peak occurrence of cervical precancer, and before the typical ages of invasive cancer. HPV=human papillomavirus. *Curves are not to scale and so units are not shown. The Lancet Public Health 2018 3, e6-e7DOI: (10.1016/S2468-2667(17)30242-6) Copyright © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 license Terms and Conditions