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Home › Articles › Healthy Woman › Human Papillomavirus

Human Papillomavirus

Can HPV Affect Your Fertility, Pregnancy or Baby?

By Teri Brown

Pages:  1  2  3  4  

Having a Healthy Pregnancy with HPV

Dr. Michael Randell, an OB/GYN at Northside Hospital in Atlanta, Ga., says the most important thing a woman with HPV can do to have a healthy pregnancy is to have a pap smear during her first visit. "If there is diagnosis of an abnormality, pregnant women are treated a little different," he says. "Patients will still get colposcopies, but we are not likely to do a biopsy unless we consider it really being a high-grade lesion or cancer. Our job during pregnancy is just to make sure a patient doesn't have cancer. Doing biopsies is not without risk, including preterm delivery and miscarriage, so we try to just look at the cervix. Many times, we'll look each trimester to make sure everything is fine."

The good news is that many patients who have pre-cancers during pregnancy and have vaginal delivery may have a regression of the disease from the cells sloughing off at the time of delivery. This data was presented in Orlando at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology in the late '90s.

"This makes sense because the cervix goes from 4 to 5 centimeters in thickness to paper thin," Dr. Randell says. "And when the head goes through, there is sloughing off. That is similar to what we do currently to treat pre-cancers."

HPV doesn't mean you will have a problematic pregnancy. With care and diligence, you can have a normal and healthy pregnancy and delivery.

Things You Should Know About HPV
and Pregnancy

  • HPV seldom causes fertility problems.
  • While HPV can cause pre-cancers and the treatment used to treat this problem may cause an incompetent cervix, doctors are generally very cautious about doing anything that would compromise a future pregnancy.
  • Though a baby's exposure to maternal HPV can cause juvenile respiratory papillomatosis, it is extremely rare and the risk doesn't warrant having a C-section.
  • If you do have HPV, you should have a pap smear during your first OB visit so your doctor will know how closely you should be monitored during your pregnancy.


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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.

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