HPV,
or Human Papilloma Virus, is predicted to be the cause for the
strongest new epidemic disease, even deadlier than AIDS, for it is
believed to be able to claim numerous lives.
Human
papilloma virus is the name for a group of viruses that affect your
skin and the moist membranes lining your body, for example, in your
cervix, anus, mouth and throat. The most widespread STI in the United
States can be of more than 100 types, many of which cause nasty looking
warts.
This article explains why HPV is considered to be even deadlier than HIV.
Firstly,
HPV is a common, prolific and highly contagious infection, which is
sexually transmitted, but skin-to-skin genital contact is also a
well-recognized mode of transmission. This means that condoms cannot
give full protection and statistics say that over three quarters of
sexually active women acquiring it at some time in their lives.
As
said above, HPV is mainly transmitted through sexual contact and most
people are infected with HPV shortly after the onset of sexual activity.
However,
the worst thing about this infection is that it can be passed even when
the infected individual has no signs or symptoms of the virus, because
in some cases, symptoms do not appear for years, and are even some cases
when people never experience any symptoms during their life. HPV is a
silent killer that can be inactive, thus unnoticed for years before it
attacks.
Even
though it is a common shared opinion that condoms offer full protection
against most sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/Aids, newest
research discovers that condoms cannot provide 100% protection against
HPV.
It
can spread through skin-to-skin contact with infected areas of the skin
not covered by the condom such as the male and female genitalia. This
is especially serious for women.
Women
are more susceptible to contracting the virus than men. Regarding HPV
transmission rates, male-to-female transmission rates are 5% higher than
female-to-male transmission rates.
Furthermore,
the most common HPV- related disease is cervical cancer. Cervical
cancer is one of the leading causes of death in women, (the number one
cause of death in woman is heart disease) and in nearly all cases of
cervical cancer, HPV infection has been the cause. To be more concrete,
two types of the HPV, types 16 and 18, are responsible for almost 70% of
all cervical cancer cases.
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