Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection - Research Paper Example

HUMAN PAPILLOMAVIRUS (HPV) INFECTION Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is a type of infection passed through skin contact from one person to another. Center for disease control and infection (CDC) acknowledges that this is the most common infection among men and women. The transmission of this disease is through inserted sex, oral sex, or skin contact (Jemal, et al. 2011). This topic is of significant interest to me since it concerns an infection that can lead to chronic illness, Cancer. The human papillomavirus (HPV) infection causes genital warts as well as warts in the mouth.

Additionally, the HPV can also cause cervical, throat, neck, head and genital cancer. Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection affects women mainly causing cervical cancer (Levesque, 2014). Cancer is a chronic illness that is deadly, quite expensive to treat and manage. Most women who suffer from cervical cancer end up having their uterus or part of the cervix removed (Chaturvedi, et al. 2011). The implication is that they may never conceive from that point forward. The danger of this infection thus underscores the significance of the topic on health care of women.

Two questions related to the human papillomavirus (HPV) infection that I would like to explore and explained why are as follows: What are the chances of the disease manifesting itself in an infected person? Research indicates that up to 90 percent of the disease would just go away without manifesting symptoms (Ma, et al. 2014).In this regard, human papillomavirus (HPV) infection can be passed from one person to another even without knowing it and at a very high rate causing more harm.Does the cancer caused by this infection manifest itself at early stages?

There is significant challenge in respect of early treatment of this disease for one simple reason; cancer caused by this virus does not show symptoms until at a later stage that makes it even more deadly.ReferenceChaturvedi, A. K., Engels, E. A., Pfeiffer, R. M., Hernandez, B. Y., Xiao, W., Kim, E., . & Gillison, M. L. (2011). Human papillomavirus and rising oropharyngeal cancer incidence in the United States. Journal of Clinical Oncology, 29(32), 4294-4301.Jemal, A., Bray, F., Center, M. M.

, Ferlay, J., Ward, E., & Forman, D. (2011). Global cancer statistics. CA: a cancer journal for clinicians, 61(2), 69-90.Levesque, R. J. (2014). Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and HPV Vaccines. InEncyclopedia of Adolescence (pp. 1340-1342). Springer New York.Ma, Y., Madupu, R., Karaoz, U., Nossa, C. W., Yang, L., Yooseph, S., . & Pei, Z. (2014). Human papillomavirus community in healthy persons, defined by metagenomics analysis of human microbiome project shotgun sequencing data sets. Journal of virology, 88(9), 4786-4797.