I had some anal warts removed back in 2018 and your post were imperative to my peace of mind. Sine then I have had 1 long term relationship of 4 years where I successfully disclosed, and nothing was ever passed on. I’m newly single and met someone at a bar about a week ago and had a laps in judgement. He licked me back there momentarily and laid on top of me and inserted his penis into me. It was kind unexpected and forceful and I immediately pushed him off me. It was maybe in me for about 5 seconds max. I then noticed what appears to be a penile wart and asked him about it. He said moles run in his family and didn’t offer up a good explanation. I’m not really sure if it was a wart or not but he was uncircumcised so it could of been an abnormality. I decided to get the gardicil vaccine a few days ago as I don’t want to go through the worry of catching new warts after this time.How likely is it that I would catch warts a second time from the interaction I described. Do I have some level of immunity? How long does it usually take for new warts to appear. How worried should I be?   

It is difficult for me to judge the chance your partner in fact has a penile wart. But whether he had a visible wart or not, you can safely assume he has been infected with HPV, probably several times, and could well be actively infected at this time. At any point in time, up to 50% of sexually active persons have detectable HPV genitally, anally, or both. That said, with or without a wart, a single exposure as brief as this one probably carries little if any risk. In addition, your history of anal warts that have not recurred for 4 years suggests you are resistant (and maybe entirely immune) to the main wart-causing types of HPV, specifically HPV 6 and 11. Those types cause 85-90% of genital and anal warts, so the odds are good you were not at risk for new warts even if exposed.

Whether vaccination against HPV will give you significant protection is unclear; it would be helpful to know your age and your sexual lifestyle over the years. That you had anal warts obviously means you have had HPV at least that one time -- but if your sexual history has been typical for men who have sex with other men, you probably have had other infections as well. If you have already had several of the 9 HPV types covered by the vaccine, it offers less protection. Age also predicts HPV risk and value of immunization:  generally the vaccine is not recommended beyond age 26, although there are plenty of exceptions. That said, vaccination is never harmful and probably provides at least modest protection regardless of age or past HPV infections.

Those comments pretty well answer your specific questions -- that is, probably you are immune or at least resistant to a new episode of anal warts, and in any case this particular event probably was not particularly risky. As for timing of new warts, they typically appear 2-6 months after exposure but it can be a year or more. But if nothing shows up in the next 6 months from now, you can be pretty confident it's not an issue. And in any case, you're also at risk for recurrence of your previous warts. In the event of new anal warts in the future, a recurrence of your previous infection probably would be a more likely explanation than this new sexual event.

All in all, I really don't think you need worry about this particular exposure, at least not in regard to HPV and warts. However, you're probably at more risk of other STDs like gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis. You should consider testing for them.

I hope these comments are helpful. Let me know if anything isn't clear.

HHH, MD