It's the most common sexually transmitted infection, but many men and women who have the human papillomavirus, or HPV, don't even know they have it.
A new study in the medical journal The Lancet looked at more than one thousand men and found approximately half are infected with HPV. The virus is primarily known for causing cervical cancer in women. Spread primarily by oral sex, HPV can cause genital warts and several kinds of cancers in men. The Lancet study says oral sex is the leading cause of head and neck cancers.
A CBS News report indicates about 20 million americans have HPV. Most of the time it clears up on its own. Only a small percentage have infections that progress to cancer - about 32-thousand cases per year. Because HPV is responsible for 12-thousand cases of cervical cancer a year, the government recommends that girls as young as 11 years old get vaccinated for the virus. Two vaccines have been approved.
The vaccine is also available for boys and men, but it's not recommended for them yet.
Experts say this study may help change that. It was funded by The National Cancer Institue to get an idea whether the HPV vaccine would be cost effective to reccomend for men.
The spread of HPV is concerning for health officials who see teenagers at risk because some young people believe oral sex is a "safe" type of sex.
Dr. Maura Gillison of The Ohio State University saw the correlation between oral sex and HPV more than a decade ago. On the web site for the James Cancer Center at OSU. Gillison is quoted as saying "The single greatest risk factor for HPV infection is sexual contact with someone who has HPV infection," she says. "The greater the number of partners you have, the higher the probability that one of those partners is HPV-positive."
Some experts are working on a way to detect the disease in people who show no symptoms. They need an oral equivalent of a Pap smear. Researchers are working on such a test at Johns Hopkins.
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