Source: MedScape Today
Author: Staff

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Jul 16 – Men who use condoms every time they have sex are less likely to harbor human papillomavirus (HPV) than those who are less consistent about protection, a new study finds.

The results, reported online June 22nd in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, may not sound surprising. In the past, however, some studies have suggested that condoms may do little to protect men from infection with HPV.

Persistent HPV infection is best known as the primary cause of cervical cancer, but it can also lead to cancers of the anus and penis. Preventing HPV infection in men may help lower their risk for those cancers, and cut their chances of transmitting the virus to their female partners — potentially helping to prevent some cases of cervical cancer.

While condom use has been shown to lower the transmission of other sexually transmitted diseases, studies have yielded conflicting results as to whether condoms help lower men’s HPV risk. One reason may be that HPV is easily transmitted, including any genital-to-genital contact, and some studies in which men have been tested for HPV in areas not protected by condoms have failed to show that condoms lower infection risk.

For the new study, Dr. Carrie M. Nielson of Oregon Health and Science University in Portland and colleagues tested 463 men between the ages of 18 and 40 for 37 types of HPV. The testing was done on swabbed samples from the penis, as well as areas not protected by condoms (the scrotum, perineum and anus).

All of the men were surveyed about their sexual history, including how often they had used condoms in the past three months. Overall, 90 men said they “always” used condoms, 154 said they never did, and the rest reported inconsistent condom use.

As a group, the men who always used condoms were less likely to test positive for HPV; 38% had HPV on at least one of the body sites tested, versus 54% of men who said they never used condoms.

Consistent condom users were also less likely to have cancer-related HPV strains: just under 17% tested positive for a cancer-related viral strain, compared with 36% of men who never used condoms.

When the researchers took a closer look at the data, they found that condoms appeared protective among men who’d had more than one partner in the past three months, but not for those who said they’d been monogamous.

Among men who reported more than one partner, consistent condom users were 78% less likely to test positive for HPV than those who never or only sporadically used condoms.

Still, if men who said they always used condoms were accurate, that means that a “substantial” proportion of consistent users nonetheless acquired HPV, Dr. Nielson and her colleagues point out.

So while condoms may lower men’s risk of infection, they do not eliminate it. Part of that is likely due to transmission to areas not protected by condoms; Dr. Nielson’s team found smaller differences in HPV-positive rates among condom users and non-users when they specifically tested body sites not covered by condoms.