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Young love. Like older love, it too can spread HPV. Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain image. |
One thing that cervical cancer awareness overlooks is that HPV causes not only that cancer but also can play a role in penile, vaginal, urethral, anal, and head and neck cancers. In fact, a recent study found that about 1 in 10 men and almost 4 in 100 women are orally infected with HPV, the most common sexually transmitted virus in the United States, and HPV-related head and neck cancer rates are higher among men. Further, HPV-related oral cancers have been on the rise for about two decades now, and HPV is now responsible for about 50% of oral cancers today.
Research also shows that about 50% of college age women acquire an HPV infection within four years of becoming sexually active. In addition, an infected mother can pass HPV to her baby during childbirth, and the virus can populate the child's larynx, causing recurrent growths that block the respiratory tract and require surgical removal.
The remainder of this post appeared initially on the Parents of Kids with Infectious Disease site, which provides information for preventing infectious disease in addition to supporting parents whose children have them. As insidious as HPV is, the vast majority of HPV infections can be prevented now with a vaccine.
Have you or a loved one ever had an abnormal Pap test result? If
precancerous cells were identified, the cause was almost undoubtedly infection
with human papillomavirus (HPV). Almost all cases
of cervical cancer arise
because of infection with this virus. Yet a vaccine can prevent infection with
the strains that most commonly cause cervical cancer.
A vaccine against cancer. It’s true.
For the vaccine to work, though, a woman must have it before HPV
infects her. You may find it difficult to look at your daughter, especially a
pre-teen daughter, and think of that scenario. But the fact is that even if
your daughter avoids all sexual contact until, say, her wedding night, she can
still contract HPV from her partner. As we noted above, it happens to be the most common
sexually transmitted infection.
About 20 million Americans have an HPV infection, and 6 million
people become newly infected every year. Half of the people who are ever
sexually active pick up an HPV infection in a lifetime. That means your
daughter, even if she waits until her wedding night, has a 1 in 2 chance of
contracting the virus. Unless it’s a strain that causes genital warts, HPV
usually produces no symptoms, and the infected person doesn’t even know they’ve
been infected.
Until the cancer shows up.
And it can show up in more places than the cervix. This virus, you
see, favors a certain kind of tissue, one that happens to be present in several
parts of you. This tissue, a type of epithelium, is a thin layer of the skin
and mucous membranes. It’s available for viral invasion in the cervix, vagina,
vulva, anus, and the mouth and pharynx. In fact, HPV is poised to replace
tobacco as the major cause of oral cancers in the United States.
The virus can even sometimes pass from mother to child, causing recurrent
respiratory papillomatosis, the recurrent growths in the throat that must be
removed periodically and can sometimes become cancerous. It strikes about 2000
children each year in the United States.
How does a virus cause cancer? To understand that, you must first
understand cancer. You may know that cells reproduce by dividing, and that
cancer occurs when cells divide out of control. Behind most cancers is a
malfunction in the molecules that tell cells to stop dividing. These molecules
operate in a chain reaction of signaling, like a series of well-timed
stoplights along a boulevard. If one starts sending an inappropriate “go”
signal or fails to send a “stop” signal, the cell divides, making more cells
just like it that also lack the right signals. If your body’s immune system
doesn’t halt this inappropriate growth, we call it cancer.
The blueprint for building these “stop” molecules is in your
genes, in your DNA sequences. As a virus, HPV also requires a blueprint to make
more viruses. Viruses use the division machinery of the host cell—in you—to
achieve reproduction by stealthily inserting their own DNA blueprint into the
host DNA.
Sometimes, when it’s finished with the host, a virus leaves a
little bit of its DNA behind. If that leftover DNA is in the middle of the
blueprint for a “stop” molecule, the cell won’t even notice. It will use the
contaminated instructions to build a molecule, one that no longer functions in
stopping cell division. The result can be cancer.
Of the 150 HPV types or strains, about 40 of which pass through
sexual contact, two in particular are associated with cancer, types 16 and 18. They
are the ones that may persist for years and eventually change the cellular
blueprint. The vaccines developed against those two strains are, therefore,
anti-cancer vaccines.
Without a successful viral infection, viral DNA can’t disrupt your
DNA. That’s what the HPV vaccine achieves against the two strains responsible
for about 70% of cervical cancers. Recent high-profile people have
made claims about negative effects of this vaccine, claims that have been thoroughly debunked. The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention as always offers accurate information about
the side effects associated with available HPV vaccines.
This achievement against cancer, including prevention of almost
100% of precancerous cervical changes related to types 16 and 18, is important.
Worldwide, a half million women receive a cervical cancer
diagnosis each year, and 250,000 women die from it. These women are somebody’s
daughter, wife, sister, friend. Women from all kinds of backgrounds, with all
kinds of sexual histories.
Women whose precancerous cervical changes are identified in time
often still must undergo uncomfortable and sometimes painful procedures to get
rid of the precancerous cells. These invasive procedures include cone biopsies that
require shots to numb the cervix and removal of a chunk of tissue from it. Cone
biopsies carry a risk of causing infertility or miscarriage or preterm
delivery. A vaccine for your daughter could prevent it all.
HPV doesn’t care if your daughter has had sex before. It’s equally
oblivious to whether the epithelium it infects is in the cervix or in the mouth
or pharynx or in an adult or a child. What it does respond to is antibodies
that a body makes in response to the vaccine stimulus.
Even if your daughter’s first and only sex partner passes along
one of the cancer-associated strains, if she’s been vaccinated, her antibodies
will take that virus out cold. It’s a straightforward prevention against a
lifetime of worry—and a premature death.
For more info: Facts about the HPV vaccine from
the National Cancer Institute.
By Emily Willingham, DXS managing editor
By Emily Willingham, DXS managing editor
FYI: Your link to the National Cancer Institute doesn't work.. at least, not for me.
ReplyDeleteThink we've fixed it now. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
ReplyDeleteCancer does not respect fame and fortune. I do believe that cervical cancer is the easiest type of cancer that you can prevent. Alternative cancer treatments has been around and I think that they are what everyone needs, someone who does not have and who has cancer should do it.
ReplyDelete