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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