If somebody becomes immune to HPV because the virus cleared in 6-18 months. Will the immune person become a carrier of the virus if they are with another person that is not clear of the same strain?
Anybody who has had 3 separate sex partners in his/her life has at least a 50% chance of having had HPV. Five or more partners and it's 80% or higher.
HHH, MD
What constitutes an average normal sex life in this day and age in the US and western countries?
If we could contrast average behaviour to the activities of those who will never be exposed to HPV it might give all of us a better perspective on how easy the virus is to catch and how extremely difficult it is to spend your entire life without being exposed.
Thanks for the thanks about the forum. I'll help a bit, but you need to do some basic reading. You are asking the most basic of questions about genital HPV infection, and I am puzzled that you can't find discussions about duration of infection in the archives of this forum. You could take a look at the article on HPV/warts in the link at the top of this forum, STD Quick Facts and Articles.
Asssuming you have had an average sex life, with at least a few different partners, you can be sure you have been infected with HPV. Your past infected partner could have been infected by you, but there is no way to know and probably was no way then. My uniform advice to all couples in which one or both persons has HPV is to totally disregard any consideration of discussion about who brought the infection into the relationship, who infected whom, etc. It is never possible to sort it out, and and it never matters.
1) Yes, you could have carried HPV for 10 years without symptoms. But that is very rare. The vast majority of infections clear up after 6-18 months.
2) Either of you could have been infected for more than 3 years. Statistically, it's more likely her than you; persistenyyour partner is properly treated and followed, as her provider recommends, so that she is protected against future cancer. People probably do not "ping pong" infection back and forth. You will never have an important health risk from the infection.
4) Once infected with any particular HPV type, a person is immune from catching the same type again. So the answer is yes, a person with, say HPV-16, can transmit his/her infection to someone who has not previously been exposed to HPV-16, but not to a partner previously infected with that type. However, it's almost impossible to ever know these things, since the vast majority of HPV infections are asymptomatic and never diagnosed.
Good luck-- HHH, MD