Human papillomavirus infection is common among women in the USA

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Human papillomavirus affects around 27 per cent of women, according to a new survey.
Human papilloma virus (HPV) is the leading sexually transmitted infection in the USA. It causes genital warts and is found in the majority of cases of cervical cancer. However, it is not clear just how widespread HPV infection is. Therefore, a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has carried out a survey on over 2,000 women aged between 14 and 59 years.

They analyzed vaginal swabs from the women and discovered HPV DNA within 26.8 per cent of them. If this sample is extrapolated to the whole US population, it means that there are nearly 50 million women who have HPV infection. Prevalence of infection was highest among women aged 20-24 years - 44.8 per cent. Overall HPV prevalence among females aged 14 to 24 years was 33.8 per cent. This is equivalent to 7.5 million HPV infections in this age group, nationwide - higher than the 4.6 million infections previously estimated.

There is now a vaccine available against HPV types 6, 11, 16 and 18 (the latter two are linked with cervical cancer). These four types accounted for 3.4 per cent of HPV infections found in this study. If the vaccine is made widely available, then the prevalence of these HPV infections may begin to decrease.

Source
Journal of the American Medical Association 28th February 2007 Volume 297 pages 876-878

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