According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, by the age of 50 more than 80% of American women will have contracted at least one strain of genital HPV. Both men and women can be carriers of HPV. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the US. A large percentage of the American population is infected with genital HPV because HPV is highly communicable. As a result, American public health experts recommend widespread HPV vaccination.
At a given time, the overall prevalence of high-risk (cancer causing) HPV types was 15% of female participants; the prevalence of the types covered by the vaccine were 1.5% (HPV-16) and 0.8% (HPV-18). The overall prevalence of low-risk (wart causing) types was 18%, the two types covered by the vaccine were found in 1.3% (HPV-6) and 0.1% (HPV-11) of the population. Overall, the types prevented by the vaccine were found in 3.4% of female participants.
Only a small percentage of women with high-risk HPV develop cervical cancer. However, each year between 250,000 and 1 million American women are diagnosed with cervical dysplasia, which is caused by HPV and is a precursor to cervical cancer. Cervical dysplasia is painful and costly to treat.
About 11,000 American women are diagnosed with cervical cancer every year, and about 4,000 die per year of the disease. Most cancers occur in those who have not had Pap smears within the previous five years.
There are 19 "high-risk" HPV types that can lead to the development of cervical cancer or other genital/anal cancers; some forms of HPV, particularly type 16, have been found to be associated with a form of throat cancer. Studies have found that human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is responsible for virtually all cases of cervical cancer.
Condoms protect against HPV, but do not completely prevent transmission. College freshmen women who used condoms consistently had a 37.8% per patient-year incidence of genital HPV, compared to an incidence of 89.3% among those who did not.
No data is kept by the U.S. government on genital wart incidence rates. It is estimated that in the U.S., at any one time about 1% of adults who have had sex have genital warts. It is estimated that about 20 million people are presently infected with HPV, and there are about six million new cases of HPV every year in the United States.
According to the CDC, Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States, with approximately 20 million people currently infected and an estimated 6.2 million additional people who become newly infected every year. More than 100 HPV types have been identified, over 40 of which can infect the genital area. High risk, or oncogenic types, including types 16 and 18, can cause high-grade cervical cell abnormalities that are precursors to cervical cancer and other cancers such as vulvar, vaginal and anal cancers as well as some oropharyngeal cancers. Low risk, or non-oncogenic types, such as HPV 6 or 11, can cause benign or low-grade abnormalities of cervical cells, genital warts, and a disease of the respiratory tract called recurrent respiratory papillomatosis Most HPV infections are transient and asymptomatic, causing no clinical manifestations.