Efficacy and safety of prophylactic human papillomavirus vaccination in healthy males

Nowadays, research on the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines is mainly focused on their efficacy in females. Hence, the objective of this study was to systematically assess the current evidence regarding the efficacy and safety of HPV vaccination in healthy males. Online databases of PubMed, Embase, MEDLINE, Web of Science and ClinicalTrials.gov (updated to November 2014) were searched to identify eligible articles. All statistical analyses were completed by STATA 12.0. For the estimated seroconversion, 95% Wilson confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated. Of the 1134 articles initially retrieved, eight studies (comprising 6079 participants) were eligible and were included in a meta-analysis. The combined evidence derived from this review suggested that the overall pooled seroconversion rates for HPV vaccination in males achieved 99.5% (95% CI 98.9–100.0%), 99.7% (95% CI 99.4–100%), 99.6% (95% CI 99.2–100%) and 99.3% (95% CI 98.4–100%) for HPV-6, HPV-11, HPV-16 and HPV-18, respectively. The incidence of injection-site adverse events in the vaccination group was higher than that in the control group [relative risk (RR) 1.121, 95% CI 1.061–1.183, P < 0.001]. No significant difference was revealed in systemic adverse events (RR 0.994, 95% CI 0.908–1.088, P = 0.892) between the two groups. No vaccine-related serious adverse events occurred in all recipients.