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HPV questions
Dr.,
I have multiple HPV questions to ask. First let me give you a brief history.
About 3 years ago my girlfriend at the time had an abnormal pap smear that tested positive for HPV (I do not know which type). She was treated with a medical procedure (the name may have been cone something??) and had normal pap smears following the treatment.
A year and a half ago I began my current relationship. My girlfriend has had no prior intercourse partners but has had prior oral sex partners. As the relationship progressed we began performing oral sex on eachother ( I would estimate ~ 25 total times ). One day I ran across an article linking HPV, oral sex, and an increased risk of head and neck cancer. I immediately notified my girlfriend and we researched the topic in the online medical. My girlfriend has had clean gyn visits since and she decided to get the HPV vaccine. We also decided to stop all sexual activity until she was finished with the vaccine.
Within the past few months my girlfriend finished the vaccine and we have been taking it slow physically. Currently we will manually stimulate eachother but we have not had any other sexual activity. I care deeply about my girlfriend and I do not want to do anything that endangers her health, but at the same time we both want the relationship to progress physically. So I have several questions..
1. Is my girlfriend at risk for HPV if we begin performing oral on eachother again. I know I may have exposed her to HPV earlier but is further exposure going to be harmful after the vaccine and our reducing contact or has all the damage been done.
2. If we begin to have intercourse is my girlfriend at risk for cervical cancer due to HPV or has the vaccine mitigated that risk?
3. Does my girlfriend need to get booster shots for the vaccine (I do not even know if they exist) every 5 years?
Thank you for your time. I will greatly appreciate any and all information that you can impart.
I have multiple HPV questions to ask. First let me give you a brief history.
About 3 years ago my girlfriend at the time had an abnormal pap smear that tested positive for HPV (I do not know which type). She was treated with a medical procedure (the name may have been cone something??) and had normal pap smears following the treatment.
A year and a half ago I began my current relationship. My girlfriend has had no prior intercourse partners but has had prior oral sex partners. As the relationship progressed we began performing oral sex on eachother ( I would estimate ~ 25 total times ). One day I ran across an article linking HPV, oral sex, and an increased risk of head and neck cancer. I immediately notified my girlfriend and we researched the topic in the online medical. My girlfriend has had clean gyn visits since and she decided to get the HPV vaccine. We also decided to stop all sexual activity until she was finished with the vaccine.
Within the past few months my girlfriend finished the vaccine and we have been taking it slow physically. Currently we will manually stimulate eachother but we have not had any other sexual activity. I care deeply about my girlfriend and I do not want to do anything that endangers her health, but at the same time we both want the relationship to progress physically. So I have several questions..
1. Is my girlfriend at risk for HPV if we begin performing oral on eachother again. I know I may have exposed her to HPV earlier but is further exposure going to be harmful after the vaccine and our reducing contact or has all the damage been done.
2. If we begin to have intercourse is my girlfriend at risk for cervical cancer due to HPV or has the vaccine mitigated that risk?
3. Does my girlfriend need to get booster shots for the vaccine (I do not even know if they exist) every 5 years?
Thank you for your time. I will greatly appreciate any and all information that you can impart.
MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL
I will try to help, but these are complex questions and some of the answers are not certain.
However, the bottom line is this: You seem to have an unbalanced perspective about HPV and its health risks. I suggest you and your partner completely disregard HPV as an issue in your relationship. Neither of you is at signfiicant risk for a serious health outcome, either in the immediate or distant future; certainly whatever risk there might be is much too low to allow it to affect the development and maturing of a mutually rewarding sexual relationship.
Some basic facts about genital HPV are that everybody gets it from time to time; it is inevitable and essentially impossible to prevent, except that the vaccine protects against infection with the most troublesome HPV strains-- and you have already taken that step. As far as oral sex, HPV, and oral cancer, just forget it. HPV is infrequently transmitted by oral sex. And despite the media attention about oral cancer, it's not a big deal. In the entire US, there are only about 6,000 cases of oral or throat cancer per year that are due to HPV-16, the main genital type that has been implicated; and those occur almost exclusively in people age 50 and over. And it is not at all certain that those people acquired their oral HPV through oral sex. (If one of the articles that concerns you is the one by Dr. Bernadine Healy, former head of the NIH, please disregard it. Her article has been heavily criticized by HPV experts for its non-objective, inflammatory slant.)
To the specific questions:
1) There probably was never any risk of oral-genital HPV transmission between you and your partner. But if there was, there was no point in stopping, since any transmission probably woudl have occured the first few times you did it. Certainly there is no reason not to resume.
2) Since a former partner had an abnormal pap, you can assume you had a genital HPV infection back then. But HPV just about always goes away (without treatment) within a few months. There is no reason to assume you still are infected with that strain. And if you are, it's a good bet your partner is immune to it, from the vaccine. There is no reason not to have unprotected vaginal sex -- certainly no reason related to HPV.
3) It is unknown whether booster shots will be required for the HPV vaccine. The best data suggest it probably will not be necessary, but only time and further research will tell for sure.
In brief, please stop worrying about HPV. I hope this helps you do that.
HHH, MD
However, the bottom line is this: You seem to have an unbalanced perspective about HPV and its health risks. I suggest you and your partner completely disregard HPV as an issue in your relationship. Neither of you is at signfiicant risk for a serious health outcome, either in the immediate or distant future; certainly whatever risk there might be is much too low to allow it to affect the development and maturing of a mutually rewarding sexual relationship.
Some basic facts about genital HPV are that everybody gets it from time to time; it is inevitable and essentially impossible to prevent, except that the vaccine protects against infection with the most troublesome HPV strains-- and you have already taken that step. As far as oral sex, HPV, and oral cancer, just forget it. HPV is infrequently transmitted by oral sex. And despite the media attention about oral cancer, it's not a big deal. In the entire US, there are only about 6,000 cases of oral or throat cancer per year that are due to HPV-16, the main genital type that has been implicated; and those occur almost exclusively in people age 50 and over. And it is not at all certain that those people acquired their oral HPV through oral sex. (If one of the articles that concerns you is the one by Dr. Bernadine Healy, former head of the NIH, please disregard it. Her article has been heavily criticized by HPV experts for its non-objective, inflammatory slant.)
To the specific questions:
1) There probably was never any risk of oral-genital HPV transmission between you and your partner. But if there was, there was no point in stopping, since any transmission probably woudl have occured the first few times you did it. Certainly there is no reason not to resume.
2) Since a former partner had an abnormal pap, you can assume you had a genital HPV infection back then. But HPV just about always goes away (without treatment) within a few months. There is no reason to assume you still are infected with that strain. And if you are, it's a good bet your partner is immune to it, from the vaccine. There is no reason not to have unprotected vaginal sex -- certainly no reason related to HPV.
3) It is unknown whether booster shots will be required for the HPV vaccine. The best data suggest it probably will not be necessary, but only time and further research will tell for sure.
In brief, please stop worrying about HPV. I hope this helps you do that.
HHH, MD
Thanks for the response...and the information is very helpful.
I definitely agree with you about the Healy article. I found the article way too "doom and gloom" and lacking some common sense.
I definitely agree with you about the Healy article. I found the article way too "doom and gloom" and lacking some common sense.
You are reading content posted in the STDs Forum
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