evidence: None of the studies have followed up participants for long enough to detect an effect on cervical cancer. The researchers looked at precancer cervical lesions instead. They found that in young women who did not carry HPV, vaccination reduced the risk of developing precancer. About 164 per 10,000 women who got placebo and 2 per 10,000 women who got the vaccine went on to develop cervical precancer. The researchers also looked at data from all enrolled women regardless whether they were free of high-risk HPV at vaccination or not. Among women aged 15 to 26 years, vaccines reduced the risk of cervical precancer associated with HPV16/18 from 341 to 157 per 10,000. HPV vaccination reduced also the risk for any precancer lesions from 559 to 391 per 10,000. [...] She added: "Cervical cancer can take many years to develop following HPV infection and development of precancer lesions, therefore long-term follow-up studies are needed to find out the effects of HPV vaccination on cervical cancer rates.