The acronym VPH means Human Papilloma Virus. There are more than 100 types of this virus. Some types manifest with warts, often warts on the soles of the feet and on the hands.
About 40 types of the virus can infect the genital area: the vulva, vagina, cervix, rectum, anus, penis or scrotum.
Human papillomavirus is so common that almost all men and women who are sexually active contract it at some point in their lives. However, most people who already have the virus do not know it. By the same token, most infections with this virus have no harmful effects at all.
Some types of the virus can cause cellular changes that sometimes lead to cervical cancer and other types of cancer in the genitals and throat. These are called high risk types.
Although most human papillomavirus infections disappear before 8 to 13 months, there are others that do not disappear. Human papilloma virus infections that do not go away can “hide” in the body for years without being detected.
It is for this reason that it is impossible to determine exactly when a person became infected, the period of time in which they are infected or who is the person who transmitted the infection to them.
If you have the human papillomavirus, there is no reason for you to be embarrassed or afraid. Most sexually active people have had the virus at some time in their lives. And most infections disappear on their own.
What are your symptoms?
There are no symptoms of human papillomavirus for high-risk types, neither in women nor in men. Most people feel good even when they suffer cellular changes caused by the virus.
Since the human papillomavirus is a common infection that usually goes away on its own, there is no reason for you to worry about whether you have them or not. Most people do not know if they have the virus.
Frequently, women discover that they have it by finding an abnormality in the results of the Pap test. Pap tests are very important tests to find abnormal cells in the cervix that are caused by the human papillomavirus. Which means that the Pap test indicates when the virus is already causing a cancer risk. The ideal is to identify it before.
The Human Papilloma Virus test can be performed simultaneously with a Pap test, or alone to detect the infection before it causes cancerous cell type abnormalities.
It is also recommended the tests of sexually transmitted infections, since generally, as well as we acquire HPV, you can also spread other infections that are not as dangerous as HPV (because of being at risk for cancer), but these other infections help progress of HPV infection thus increasing the risk of cancer due to HPV. The most common sexually transmitted diseases are Chlamydia, herpes type 1, herpes type 2, among others.
In Genolife we have the panel on sexually transmitted diseases by PCR (EST-4: Chlamydia, HSV-1 and 2 and HPV-typed) for the detection of the virus and which are those of low and high risk for a more appropriate treatment.
