• 9/21/2007
  • United Kingdom
  • Dr Thomas Stuttaford:
  • Times Online (www.timesonline.co.uk)

The Health Protection Agency’s study confirms that a significant proportion of young women are having sex between the ages of 14 and 16. The finding of positive antibodies to HPV, the human papillomavirus, which can infect anyone, man or woman, who has sexual intercourse, is a good marker for sexual activity.

Although 80 per cent of women become HPV positive during their lives, in only a small minority of cases does it give rise to either premalignant or malignant changes in the cervix. Most people are unaware when they are infected with HPV because the obvious genital wart is not of the type that turns malignant. It takes between ten and twenty years for cervical cancer to develop after infection.

Well over 99 per cent of cases of cervical cancer can be shown to have been caused by infection with HPV. Different strains of HPV from those that cause cervical cancer result in the unsightly and troublesome genital warts. HPV is also certainly responsible for many cases of anal and penile cancer and it is thought by many doctors to account for the marked upsurge in cases of oral cancer over the past 30 years that has coincided with an increase in oral sex.

It has been known for many years that far more young girls, from all walks of life, are having sex when still under age than their mentors liked to assume. For this reason it is important that girls especially, but preferably both boys and girls, should be vaccinated against HPV before they are likely to start sexual intercourse. If boys are not vaccinated they will remain a pool of infection and the vaccination will not prevent the other cancers related to HPV. The vaccination currently available will give only 80 per cent protection because it does not cover all the five sub-types of virus that are known to cause malignancies.