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Human Papillomavirus
Can HPV Affect Your Fertility, Pregnancy or Baby?
By Teri Brown
Generally, the answer is no. Pre-cancers and venereal warts can sometimes worsen in pregnancy because Mom's immune system is affected by being pregnant.
"Performing a pap smear at the initial OB visit is the standard of care, and it is not uncommon to find abnormalities at that time," Dr. Fink says. "Pregnant women with abnormal pap smears still undergo colposcopy, though we usually do not perform biopsies of the cervix in pregnancy unless the abnormal area looks suspicious for a high-grade lesion."
According to Dr. Fink, the presence of HPV or pre-cancers affects neither being pregnant nor, usually, the process of labor and delivery. The only caveat is that occasionally a pregnant woman has such large growth of genital warts on the vaginal skin and vulva that vaginal delivery is not possible. This is an extremely rare occurrence.
"Yes, but the incidence is rare," Dr. Fink says. "A condition called juvenile respiratory papillomatosis (JRP) is the most common form of benign growth of the larynx and windpipe in children, usually occurring between ages 2 and 5. It occurs due to exposure to HPV from Mom. Risk factors are known to be first-born child, vaginal delivery and a teenage mom with genital warts. One study showed babies born to moms with genital warts [are] 231 times more likely to have JRP than those born without this history."
Still, JRP is rare. The risk to babies born even with this history is less than 1 percent, according to Dr. Fink. Therefore, there s no recommendation that moms with HPV have C-section deliveries. HPV is so common that if a C-section were performed on every woman with a history of HPV, thousands of unnecessary C-sections would be performed to avoid a single case of JRP.
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Human Papillomavirus (HPV) by Annabelle on 09/26/2009 06:14PM
I have HPV. The doctor said it sometimes just goes away on its own. Hoping that's the case for me.