HPV (Human Papilloma Virus)

Human papilloma virus is a highly sexually transmitted disease, usually occurring after immediate contact with an infected person .
     HPV is a DNA virus that affects human tissues such as skin and especially genital areas like anus, vagina and other mucous membranes. There are many papilloma viruses of the same family causing severe or light damage on cells and in human body in general. As these viruses establish productive infections in stratified epithelium of the skin or mucous membranes can cause, regarding also to the variety of the viruses of papilloma family, many disturbances such as warts (on skin or commonly genital warts ) and some types of the virus can lead to cancer (only a minority of them ) of the cervix, vulva, vagina, anus and penis in men. More than 30 to 40 types of HPV are typically transmitted through sexual contact and infect the anogenital regions, although nearly 200 are known today.
     However, many HPV infected people have no symptoms and this is a real obstacle for fighting and eliminating this virus. Coming in contact skin to skin with an infected person or having sex without precautions puts yourself on immediate exposure to the virus and the therapies followed after wards are not cheap and demand a long period of time to make your physician ensure you that you are healthy.
     Therapies followed for removing genital or other skin warts are mainly based on restricting the virus as more as possible so that each one's immune system can suppress the virus. All therapies provided include 1) Cryotherapy:
2) Laser treatment: This treatment is used for extensive or recurrent genital warts. It may require local, regional, or general anesthesia. The laser physically destroys the HPV-induced lesion. Disadvantages include high cost, increased healing time, scarring, and potentially infectious viral particles in the air caused by the laser plume. 3)Electrodesiccation. 4) other non surgical treatments include :

• Podophyllum resin (Pod-Ben-25, Podofin) is topically applied by a health care practitioner.

• Podofilox (Condylox) can be topically applied at home and has a highercure rate than podophyllum resin. Podofilox also is useful for prevention.

• Trichloroacetic acid or bichloracetic acid is topically applied; however, the response is often incomplete and recurrence is higher and it may cause pain and burning.

• 5-Fluorouracil (Efudex) is applied as a cream, has a long treatment time, can cause burning and irritation, and has many side effects.

• Interferon alpha-n3 (Alferon N) is an injection used for warts that do not respond to other therapies; however, it has many side effects

• Imiquimod (Aldara) is applied as a cream and local skin irritation is a common side effects . HOWEVER, the most expensive but also effective treatment is the laser one. Undoubtedly no treatment guarantees no recurrence of warts caused by HPV  but LASER based on carbon dioxide helps minimizing the problem more effectively, more efficiently and without affecting the healthy tissues. On the other hand, there might be some more visits that once after a laser or other treatment to face the problem completely.