Re Jørgensen L, Gøtzsche PC, Jefferson T. The Cochrane HPV vaccine review was incomplete and ignored important evidence of bias. BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine 2018. doi:10.1136/bmjebm-2018-111012. 

I write with regard to this publication concerning the Cochrane human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine review published May 2018.1 The views expressed in this letter are entirely my own and not those of the institutions I work for or of the Cochrane Collaboration. However, I wish to make the following observations.

The authors of the BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine (BMJ EBM) article contend that almost half the data were ‘missing’. The additional data that the authors of the BMJ EBM article refer to were only available because of an extensive search in pharmaceutical and registry data over several years.2 While it is admirable that this work was undertaken, it is unclear if the addition of these data would have made a difference to the conclusions of the review. With more than 35 000 women in the Cochrane review, the reported benefits of HPV vaccination in terms of reducing cervical dysplasia and treatments for cervical dysplasia are not in doubt. …