So there re several
HPV threads running on the forum in the last month. Some are really long, and drawn out with lots of opinions and ideas. I am just going to post here on this recent short one (sorry for not being specific about the exact question asked), to make sure that those that are looking for studies know that OCF has captured with the authors permission, or they were studies that our donors sponsored portions of, and the most relevant ones are right here on our site. For sure there are others, but some have inherent bias in them, small populations, or done without proper scientific controls, and they were culled from what our science board decided to put on the OCF site. There are thousands of studies, some better than others. For those of you that want to go searching here is your starting point
Early information
http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/facts/hpv_reports.htminformation since 2000
http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/HPV/hpv-scientific-articles.htmlVaccine
http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/HPV/hpv-vaccine-related-articles.htmlother stuff
http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/HPV/All this is being updated this month. But much of this multiple thread discussion misses the point that just about every adult in the US is going to be exposed. It is impossible to know when, or by whom, since you do not know you have the virus, and you do not know that you have cleared it. (How could someone intentionally harm another through transmission, when you can't even know that you have it, and the persons that you are having sex with will likely be part of the naturally protected 99% of the population) Only about .9% of those exposed to an oncogenic
HPV orally develop a cancer from it. Do the math. These are approximations;
US population, 300 million, likely 50 million too young to have sex and 50 million too old to be having sex. That leaves about 200 million people, most of whom will get the
HPV virus. Out of 200 million people about 12-15k got an oral cancer from it last year. Someone do the math and tell us how many zeros come after the decimal point in that percentage to calculate what your odds are of getting this. The odds are very, very small. We are a very small, unlucky club. The good news is that we do better than people whose etiology is tobacco or an unknown cause (7%). We also have very few recurrences of an
HPV etiology OSCCC. 30,000 or more people will die on US freeways in 2014. 8 thousand will die from oral cancer and not even half of those from an
HPV etiology. I won't even comment on the legal discussion that has gone on. There is a lot we do not know, actually the numbers we are using today are not always accurate since reporting over the last decade has been hap hazard, even by the best hospitals who didn't even test for it in OSCC patients. Combine that with what we know, we don't know, which is vast, and much of this discussion does not have a finite answer to the questions asked in it.
To answer Tonys question, it appears that treatments do not eliminate the virus, and that post treatment we can still be
HPV+. This was published by Gillison years ago. This really isn't a surprise given that the virus if it is dormant/active/dormant/active as some suspect, could be residing in an anatomical site not in the field of treatment. Herpes Simplex Virus which you get for life, lives on the ganglion of your nerves when it is dormant, and can be widely distributed. That is just one real life example, and in
HPV we don't even have actual proof that it is dormant, though many good science people believe so in spite of the lack of evidence of it. (We have never found it in a dormant state anywhere.) It does account for why people that have had monogamous relationships for decades suddenly get a
HPV+ cancer, but the opposite problem also exists. There have been 20 year olds with and
HPV+ OSCC. Yes, there is birth canal transfer as a possibility, and that would give you a couple decades again. But none of this has any evidence pro or con.
