“I just wanted to see if there was an issue,” says DeLong. “I certainly didn’t expect to find such a strong association.” Approximately 60% of women who did not receive the HPV vaccine had been pregnant at least once compared to just 35% of women who had had an HPV shot had ever conceived. For married women, the gap was also about 25%: 75% who did not receive the shot were found to have conceived, while only 50% who received the vaccine had ever been pregnant. “Results suggest that females who received the HPV shot were less likely to have ever been pregnant than women in the same age group who did not receive the shot,” the study says. It concludes, as all studies like this do, that the data points to an association, not causation, between the new vaccine and reduced fertility but that further study is warranted.