Human papillomavirus (HPV), also called papillomavirus, is a widespread germ that affects more than half of all people who have sex. It is the causative agent of practically all cases of cervical cancer and its precursor lesions. To date, more than 200 different types of HPV have been identified. Only two high-risk genotypes, 16 and 18, cause approximately 70% of invasive cervical lesions, and the other 12 types account for the remaining 25-35%.
1. How is it contracted?
Through skin or mucous contact. The main route of infection is sexual. In fact, this infection is the most common sexually transmitted infection worldwide.
2. What are the symptoms?
Most people who have human papilloma do not have any symptoms or health problems. Sometimes human papilloma can cause genital warts. HPV detection tests are a very sensitive and early marker of the risk of cancer or precursor lesions, especially in women older than 25 years.
3. How is it cured?
There is no cure, but there are treatments for health conditions that HPV can cause, such as genital warts, cervical changes, and cervical cancer. Prevention is paramount, with recommendations to reduce the number of sexual partners and condom use, although the degree of protection against HPV provided by condoms is unknown. Areas not covered by the condom could be exposed to the virus.
4. Can the baby be infected during childbirth?
Very occasionally, a pregnant woman infected with HPV can transmit it to the newborn during childbirth.
5. The vaccine, who gets it?
Vaccination seeks to prevent cancers caused by this virus: in women especially cervical cancer and in men throat cancer and others. Vaccination is especially effective if the infection has not occurred and this can only be guaranteed when sexual intercourse has not yet begun. For this reason, it is pre-adolescents and adolescents who will potentially benefit most from its preventive effects. In Spain there are three prophylactic vaccines, without live viruses. It is recommended that from 11-12 years of age receive both doses. It is included in the vaccination schedules of all the autonomies, so far it has only been administered to 12-year-old girls. Although all communities have been given a deadline to introduce this vaccine into the funded calendar for children. Some autonomies include in their vaccination programs women with high-grade precancerous lesions who are going to be treated, or have already been, with surgical techniques, since the risk of reinfection by the same or different virus is high, or reactivation by the causative virus.
6. If you are vaccinated are you free to get infected?
Vaccinated people develop defenses that prevent infection by these viruses in case of contact, although it must be borne in mind that not all papillomaviruses implicated in tumors are contained in the vaccines available today.
7. If I have it, will I develop cancer?
There is a test that can detect high-risk types of HPV in the cervix that can cause cancer. Adequate and sustained screening of healthy women by cervical cytology has managed to reduce the incidence and mortality from cervical cancer by up to 70-80%. It can therefore be said that cancer caused by HPV is a very rare complication of a frequent infection, and that infection by the virus is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for cervical cancer.
2023-05-27 04:05:07
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