[quote=Tony Australia]I and some consultants suspect that HPV could be a cause. What I dont understand is even if I get a test and it is positive apart from a better prognosis can I do anything to hurt the virus so as to avoid it doing the same again. Would a vacine help once infected???[/quote]
When I first came on these boards in 2006, the husband of one poster, Gail Mac, was taking part in a Phase 1 (earliest) trial that Johns Hopkins was doing to develop a therapeutic vaccine that could help patients previously diagnosed with HPV shed the virus more easily upon any re-exposure. A researcher at Hopkins (now at Ohio State U.), Dr. Maura Gillison, was a leader in identifying HPV as a cause of oral cancer (in large part due to research support from OCF), and the tumor taken from Gail's husband was among the earliest -- at least among participants on these message boards -- to be identified as HPV+.

Here's a thread about it, and a follow-up. I don't know where things stand now, though. (This is different from Gardasil, which should be given prior to any exposure to HPV -- hence the targeting to teenagers before they are sexually active.)

Aside to Tony: I love Perth. We lived in the Middle East for a number of years and have some very good British friends from those days who made Perth their next stop -- and are still there. We visited them in 1993, and I'm hoping to get back there next year.