The lack of knowledge about HPV prevalence and its transmission is of concern because it may impact on future health behaviours. selleck chemicals llc Our data suggest that HPV prevalence is underestimated and that as a result girls assess their own likelihood of contracting HPV

as low, believing that HPV infection was only common among people who had multiple sexual partners. This notion may have arisen from media reporting about HPV and the development of the vaccine; some media coverage reported concerns that HPV vaccination might increase the risk of promiscuity among adolescents [22], whilst little news coverage reported that HPV is a highly infectious and prevalent virus within the general population, or that around 20% of girls will have contracted HPV by the time they reach 18 years of age [23]. Waller and colleagues have argued that an emphasis on the high prevalence of HPV in the population may be useful in helping to increase the acceptability of HPV vaccination if people perceive the likelihood of contracting HPV infection to be high [24]. In contrast to concerns that in targeting of HPV campaign material at sexually active

young women, girls could be presumed to be the source of HPV infection [25], our study found that some girls viewed boys as the vector of infection. Neratinib Indeed there was much discussion among participants about the need for boys to be tested routinely for HPV as part of STI screening and treated if infection was detected. This demonstrates how in the event of not knowing about HPV infection, participants tended to draw on their other knowledge found about sexually transmitted infections such as chlamydia. It also highlights the level of confusion among some young people on what is a complex

issue, which may have implications for how they assess the risks associated with HPV for their health. If girls assess that their own risk of contracting infection is low and that HPV infection could be amenable to treatment, vaccination could be deemed less important. Although HPV vaccine uptake is generally high, should uptake rates fall these data suggest that there is a need to make girls aware of the high prevalence of HPV and that their best form of protection is the vaccine. However, these misunderstandings could also have implications for the uptake of HPV should the programme be rolled out to include boys in the future One limitation of this qualitative study is that the girl’s self-selected into the study, and that despite advertising for girls who had not opted to have the HPV vaccine, we only managed to recruit eight unvaccinated girls. Nevertheless, this study does offer new insights about girls’ concerns and views on HPV and HPV vaccination which could be used as the basis to conducting a larger scale representative survey to identify which findings are generalisable.