Ten years of HPV vaccines: State of art and controversies

•HPV vaccines prevent infection of some HPV types related to cervical cancer or genital warts.•Three HPVs vaccines are currently on the market and all are safe, with high efficacy.•Longer follow-up is still needed to assess safety of HPV vaccines.•Current vaccines do not possess therapeutic role.•Massive vaccinations may select new high risk types of HPV in the future.

The human papillomavirus (HPV) represents one of the most common sexually transmitted infections and it has been related to cervical cancer. The HPV vaccines prevent infection with certain species of HPV associated with the development of cervical cancer or genital warts. We carried out a PubMed search up to 2015 evaluating all randomized studies published in literature. This review discusses the current status of HPVs vaccines on the global market, efficacy, safety profiles, controversies and future vaccine developments. Three HPVs vaccines are currently on the global market: bivalent, quadrivalent and ninevalent. Bivalent and quadrivalent vaccines can protect against almost 70% of cervical HPV-related cancerous and precancerous conditions and the ninevalent vaccine, instead, provides a protection against almost 90%. The use of vaccinations raised several controversies in the last years and, currently, is not possible to establish which type of vaccine is most effective, however all of them are safe.