A large study involving millions of Danish and Swedish girls has shown that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine has no short- or long-term health effects. The HPV vaccine is used in boys and girls around the age of 12 and is given three times over six months to protect against HPV infection, which can cause cervical cancer. The new study used national data from both Denmark and Sweden to investigate the number of 10-year-old girls diagnosed with any of 53 autoimmune or neurological disorders, including celiac disease, pancreatitis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and episodic sleeping sickness. The girls were also investigated to see if the HPV vaccination caused blood clots. As a result, between 2006 and 2010, more than 997,000 girls were diagnosed with one of these diseases, and more than 296,000 received at least 1 HPV vaccination. Approximately 160,000 girls completed all 3 immunizations. The results of the study were published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in October 2013. The study did not find a correlation between which disease type or timing was associated with HPV vaccination within the previous 6 months, or with never having received this vaccine.