May 2002
HPV is the most common viral sexually transmitted disease. Remember, there is no cure for a virus!
Street name: Genital Warts (Over 80+ strains of this virus identified)
Fact: HPV is highly contagious—transmitted by skin-to-skin contact
Signs & Symptoms: No particular symptoms except for possible warts
Treatment: Warts are removed chemically, laser or surgically, but they can grow back. PAP tests are administered every 3-6 months, followed by appropriate surgical procedures with abnormal PAP.
Some warts are visible to the naked eye (cauliflower-like wart clusters, usually small), however, some are invisible or microscopic (you don’t even know you have an STD). An Abnormal PAP smear alerts the physician that there is concern and more testing is needed. The microscopic strains of HPV are closely linked to cancer. 98% of cervical cancer is caused by HPV. More women die of cervical cancer in our country every year (5000) than die of AIDS.
A young girl wrote a letter to her teacher after I had spoken to her class. She was engaged to a young man when she became sexually intimate with him. She began taking birth control pills so she wouldn’t become pregnant. The following year, she went to her physician to get a PAP test before getting another prescription of BCP’s. When the doctor received her test results, it revealed she had abnormal cells indicating cancerous cells in her cervix. He was shocked! He found she had microscopic genital warts on the cervix of her uterus. After three surgical treatments and three more PAP tests that continued to reveal cancerous cells, she was facing possibly having to have her uterus removed because the cancer was spreading rapidly. This would also mean she would never be able to give birth to her own children. Girls, she was 18 at the time and had had sex with no one but her fiancé — so where did she get the HPV?