What You Need to Know About Genital Warts
Genital warts (or Condyloma, Condylomata acuminata, or venereal warts) is a type of skin disease. You can contract this type of skin disease through any type of skin to skin sexual contact. Whether its oral, anal or genital sex, you will be infected as long as your partner already has an infection. Genital warts are caused by a virus called human papillomavirus or HPV. This type of virus is unfortunately, dormant which means you can never tell if you have them unless the warts comes out. The virus could stay in your body for months without even giving out a symptom. That also means that you can never tell if your sexual partner has the virus that will cause warts.
Genital warts may be found inside the vagina or its entrance and the anus for women. This type of warts for men could be found either in their penis or in their scrotum. The warts could come in small, pimple like dots or could grow big and in groups which is common for highly infected individuals.
Treatments
Unfortunately, there is no known cure for HPV. But the external manifestation of genital warts could be easily removed. For simpler cases, genital warts could be addressed by the immune system requiring you treatment or medicine at all. On the other hand, acute conditions may require doctor's treatment. The common forms of doctor-assisted treatment for warts are the following: laser treatment, cryogenics (freezing the warts), or by simple burning them.
Sometimes a patient may be cured with drugs. These are directly injected to the infected area. But they are often very expensive and they are rarely recommended since the traditional means for removing them still works even for acute cases.
These processes do not guarantee that the genital warts will no longer come back or prevent you from infecting others. But the good news is that the body will eventually develop an immune system against genital warts. After infection, the patient could develop an immune system against warts in a year or two depending on the health conditions of the infected patient. This may also help in preventing the patient from preventing others but this is not guaranteed.
Prevention
The use of condom is highly recommended for those who are sexually active and have multiple partners. The virus that causes genital warts doesn't have any manifestations. It could stay in the infected person for months without showing the warts. As already indicated, you will never know if the person has genital warts. You can prevent direct skin to skin contact during sexual intercourse by using a condom.
An alternative is Gardasil, a vaccine for HPV. Although it will not prevent all strains of HPV, it will prevent the common strains. The common strains cause at least 90% of the genital warts cases every year. However, this type of vaccine is only recommended for women.
The key to prevent and combat genital warts is through proper protection during sexual intercourse. A healthy body will also help as this will increase the development of the immune system against genital warts.