Two recent pieces of news collide to produce some concern for women: Those infected with both HPV and HIV may progress in HIV disease faster; and as a group, women at risk for HIV carry a lot of HPV – double jeopardy.
Human papilloma virus (HPV) is well-established as the leading cause of vaginal, cervical, and uterine cancers; it also causes anal warts and is the probable cause of many, or perhaps most, anal cancers. Women can become infected vaginally with HPV by sexual intimacy with an infected man, and vice versa. Women and men both can be infected anally by sexual intimacy. One catch: Most men can carry HPV genitally without having noticeable symptoms and thus do not know they are infected.
The first news item is this: A lab study suggests that HPV may speed HIV progression. HPV-infected cells produce growth factors that stimulate the immune system, reawakening HIV in immune cells which might have lain latent and causing them to start producing more virus. The researchers conclude, therefore, that infection with HPV could speed HIV disease progression.
The second report revealed just last week that HPV infection is widely spread among women at risk for infection, especially among women of color. They may have it either vaginally or anally, but either way, it poses significant ramifications.
AIDS or vaginal cancer – neither is attractive. If ever there was cause to practice safer sex, this may be it.
(For details, see December’s Obstetrics and Gynecology
2000;96:879-885).
This article appears in February 2 • 2001.