liveonearth: (Default)
liveonearth ([personal profile] liveonearth) wrote2010-05-22 09:32 pm

Tiny Exposure to Tobacco Aggravates HPV Viral Load


This is a really new finding that came up in our gyn lab class last week - because cervical dysplasia and HPV are so incredibly rampant, it's good information for us all to have. The basic idea is that there is no dose-response with cigarette smoking and HPV - even one cigarette per day yields the same viral load increase as 2 packs per day. CRAZY!!! The other interesting thing that we learned was that having sex with a man who smokes increases viral load because the constituents in tobacco smoke that are problematic with HPV are in the SEMEN! Anyway, here's a link to the free pdf: http://caonline.amcancersoc.org/cgi/reprint/60/3/137