Before we go on to discussing treatment for HPV, you should know what HPV really is.
There are more than 20 million Americans affected by the condition, yet about 76% of women have never heard about this STD, which is strange because almost 100% of cervical cancers are caused by this infection.
Is there any HPV treatment?
In the majority of the cases, there are no symptoms of the condition and usually it doesn’t need treatment. The condition is caused by a virus and it cannot be treated with antibiotics.
At the moment there is no actual cure for the condition. Some of the types of HPV cause genital warts and the other types lead to cervical cancer.
Instead of HPV treatment you could be thinking about prevention. At the moment there are two different kinds of vaccines: one of them protects women against two types of HPV, while the other one protects against all four of them.
The treatment for HPV depends greatly on the kind of infection that you are affected by. In case you are faced with the low risk types, then you could treat yourself at home.
Nonetheless in case the type that you have contracted is a high risk one that causes genital cancer, the treatment depends on the stage of development of the infection.
Anal and genital warts
Some of the HPV treatments in this case could be done at the office of your healthcare provider. In the majority of the cases the time required for the treatment is of about 8 months.
Keep in mind that although sometimes there might not be any signs of the infection left, the infection itself could still be present.
A kind of treatment for HPV that you could have is chemical treatment, that is quite embarrassing, painful and it might result in scarring. Although it is quite effective, you need to use it several times.
Another product that you could be using as HPV treatment is imiquimod cream. This works through stimulating the immune system to fight off the infection.
Pre-cancerous lesions
The problem with these is that they rarely present visible symptoms. Usually they are observed during a Pap test. In order for the lesions to turn into cancerous cells it takes about 10 years and in case you have a Pap test regularly, you can be sure that it gets treated on time.
Usually the treatment for HPV in case of these lesions is successful. According to the stage that you are at, the options include loop electrosurgical excision procedure. During this the affected tissue is removed with the help of a wire loop. Other treatment options include cryotherapy and laser therapy.
HPV related cancer
In case you have cancer the HPV treatment gets more complicated because it means that the cancerous cells of the cervix have spread to the uterus as well. In case the cancer can be found only in the cervix, treatment for HPV includes the removal of the cervix, thus removing the source.
