In this primary research study, Evidence of Immune Memory 8.5 Years Following Administration of a Prophylactic Human Papillomavirus Type 16 Vaccine, (2012), Ali Rowhani-Rahbar and a group of fellow researchers in the fields of epidemiology, microbiology and immunology, seek out to determine whether prophylactic HPV 16 vaccines effectively provide long term immunity to patients receiving them. An updated HPV vaccine containing strains HPV 6/11/16/18 was administered to 52 women who had received the HPV-16 vaccine 8.5 years prior. It was found that all the subjects experienced a heightened immune response following injection of the HPV 6/11/16/18 vaccine, implying that immune memory for HPV virus was present. They wanted to establish whether subjects had developed immune memory to the HPV virus in order to determine whether they were still protected from the virus long term and thus protected from the risk of developing cervical cancer. This research was published in the peer reviewed journal, The Journal of Clinical Virology and is intended to be shared with peers working in the same and similar fields of research.
