When can I find out if I have HPV?

Its been six weeks since my "initial exposure"

My doctor says I can take a Herpes blood test. She even said I can get an HIV blood test done - I was quite surprised when she said that. As far as Im concerned, I thought you had to wait 6 months for an HIV blood test - well maybe not that long but at least 3 months! She said it was detectable by 6 weeks...

Well my question is how about HPV? I know they can only be detected through a Pap smear - so if I was caught HPV from my initial exposure (six weeks ago) can I get a pap smear done now? I mean is it too early to detect if I have HPV? Is there a certain time frame.

Basically, I want to test for HPV. I had a pap smear done 4 months ago and I was clear for that. It came back negative - however since I may have caught something six weeks ago - Id really like to know if I have HPV. I do not want to wait for warts to pop and I do not want to wait for another 8 months (since I get a check done annually) My question is - if i caught something from that incident 6 weeks ago - can i get an HPV test done now? Is 6 weeks a good enough time? Will abnormalities be present at this stage?

Id really like to hear what you have to say - I would like to discuss this with my doctor and see what she says.

[H. Hunter Handsfield, M.D.]

Your doctor is right about 6 weeks being enough time to test reliably for HIV; see numerous other threads on this forum (search the forum for "time to postive hIV test".  6 weeks is a bit early for HSV.

HPV testing normally is done in conjunction with a pap smear but is not recommended as a screening test in someone who thinks they might have been exposed.  A negative test does not prove HPV isn't (or wasn't) present.  And even if you had a positive test, what are you going to do about it?  There is no treatment for asymptomatic HPV, except to watch it and wait until it goes away; and be on the lookout for pre-cancerous pap smear changes.  (But every woman needs to do that anyway.)

Nobody should lose sleep over genital HPV.  Except for the minority of people whose only lifetime sex partner is someone who also has never had any other partners, HPV basically is inevitable and unavoidable.  At least 70% of us get it at least once, within our first 3-4 lifetime sex partners.  Until the promising vaccines against the common HPV types are on the market (probably ~2 years from now), the only useful prevention strategy for HPV is for women to have regular pap smears to detect pre-cancerous lesions--but not for the primary purpose of detecting HPV itself.

Good luck--  HHH, MD