[Question #11732] Oral HPV Risks
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12 months ago
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Hello,
I (F28) recently (one month ago) had a couple of warts cryod off in my anal area. I recently met someone and am planning on waiting a couple of months before having vaginal sex with him, but I was wondering about receiving oral from him. Is it safe for him to perform oral on me now that my warts are gone? Should I still wait 3 months after removal to receive oral? Wondering what the risks of acquiring oral warts are (I have read some people on this forum had them).
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Edward W. Hook M.D.
12 months ago
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Welcome to the Forum. I'll be glad to comment. I would suggest re-orienting that way you think about warts/ HPV.
You are of an age at which you should have received the HPV vaccine. I hope you have. If you have then there is little reason for you to worry or abstain related to HPV. OTOH, if you are not vaccinated, you likely already have HPV, as does your partner if he has been sexually active for more than 6 months, often due to several different HPV stains)
Oral HPV infections are less common than genital infections and are less efficiently transmitted than genital HPV.
I would not feel the need to abstain from sexual contact of any sort because of recent treatment for genital warts. Disclosure would be reasonable but not absolutely necessary.
I would suggest you review some of the many other threads on this Forum about HPV. We make them available in order for clients to learn more about common sexual health problems. EWH
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12 months ago
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Thank you Dr. Hook. I did in fact receive the Gardasil 4 vaccine when it came out. What do you mean when you say there is little worry? I got warts regardless of the vaccine.
When you say you would not abstain from sex, do you mean the transmission risk is low? I have read that you can still transmit HPV to others when there are no visible warts. On the other hand, I am sure my strain must be fairly rare, as I received my Gardasil shots before I began having sex.
On the other hand, the nurse practitioners who cryod my warts off stated that I would no longer be infectious once the lesions were removed due to the nature of the warts based off the biopsy. I have not read anything online to support what they have said however.
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Edward W. Hook M.D.
12 months ago
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Glad to hear that you have received the HPV vaccine. The HPV vaccine you received prevents about 95% of genital warts caused by HPV types six or 11. Thus, unless you were sexually active before you received the vaccine, your genital warts were likely due to one of the rarer HPV types that caused 5% of all genital warts.
Your follow up question suggests that you did not take my recommendation and review the hundreds of other threads on our site where both disclosure and abstaining from sex following a genital wart disclosure are discussed extensively. I will once again encourage you to do so. The reason for the recommendation is Not only because of reduced transmission following successful treatment but because current partners have already been exposed and future unvaccinated partners may already be infected since over 80% of sexually active adults have HPV and often have infection with multiple strains.
EWH
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12 months ago
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I was not sexually active before I received my vaccine. This is definitely a rarer strain. Since it’s a rare strain, is it less likely to be communicable? Like perhaps it’s not a wart causing strain of hpv but a strain of hpv that sometimes causes warts? I don’t really know how all the strains of HPV work but I heard some high risk strains occasionally show warts. If it is mainly a wart causing strain, I will definitely transmit it to anyone I sleep with and they will also get warts. Is infectivity really that much reduced after warts are removed? I know the 3-6 month rule is based off possible recurrences, but assuming I have no recurrence (praying) would it be safe to have sex now with a low chance of transmitting whatever rare wart causing strain of the virus I have?
Also are the odds high that I got this from a single encounter? I had three partners in the past 3 years and two I only slept with once. Is it more likely I got it from the partner I slept with multiple times vs. one off encounters with the others? They were unprotected. I hear there’s a 65% chance of getting warts after sleeping with someone with warts so I wanted to know the odds.
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Edward W. Hook M.D.
12 months ago
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Sigh. I sense you have not heard most of what I’ve said and placing far more significance on having had a wart than is warranted. As you know, we provide up to 3 responses to each client’s questions. This will be my final response. You should not need to return to the Forum and if you do, your question may be deleted without a reply and without return of your posting fee.
There are no solid scientific data on how transmissible HPV of any type is on a per exposure basis. It is safe to say that, on average, most single exposures to infected partners do not lead to infection however as mentioned above, there is no known specific transmissibility figure. The 65% figure sounds like something you saw on the internet and is incorrect.
As you point out, if you do not experience a recurrence within 3 months of treatment, it is unlikely that you will, or that you will transmit infection to a partner.
As I suggested above on two occasions, you need to know more about HPV than it is apparent that you do. Looking on the Internet is absolutely the wrong way to do this and will only mislead you and cause onward concerns.
This completes this thread. I hope the information I have provided is helpful to you. EWH
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