joreth | Entries tagged with sti

http://www.cancerpage.com/news/article.asp?id=13212 - some really technical information about how HPV-16 (one of the two strains responsible for 70% of cervical cancers) causes oral cancers. How "genital" HPV worked for oral cancer and which strains are connected to oral cancers came up in conversation recently, so I'm posting this link. The bottom line is that HPV-16 causes a majority of cervical cancers and also causes oral cancers, although this article does not give statistics about how many cases of oral cancer are caused by 16, or how easy it is to transmit 16 orally. It's just the biological breakdown of how 16 infects the oral tissue.

http://www.doctorndtv.com/news/detailnews.asp?id=3701 - The first article I've seen that gives actual numbers regarding HPV-caused anal cancer. More study needs to be done, but these findings indicate that women are much more successful at clearing an anal HPV infection and that HPV infections last significantly shorter time periods than cervical HPV infections (which makes sense, given the much lower numbers of anal cancer compared to cervical cancer). The initial findings are such that it has been recommend that futher testing is necessary to judge the efficacy of anal HPV testing as a screen for anal cancer, and it might turn out to be inefficient, thereby removing HPV-testing of the anal area from standard screening practices.

There are a few articles that have made it into the news about HPV that I want to share, in the interest of being what seems to be the only online source for laymen to keep up with medical advancement. They're not groundbreaking, society-changing news flashes, like the vaccine was, but they may eventually lead to one, and they're exciting even for their lack of flashy news coverage.

The first is that researchers have found a genetic component that makes people more or less susceptible to succumbing to HPV. This is important for the future trend of customized healthcare. Knowing that you are genetically likely to have your HPV infection turn into cancer if you get HPV would allow doctors to tailor your screening schedule to increase the chances that they'll catch it early, whereas people who have an increased genetic ability to fight the HPV infection so that it passes through the system harmlessly can rely on the once-a-year screening.

Cancer has always been a mystery to us. Even when we know that certain strains are caused by viruses, or tobacco smoke, or whatever, we are still struggling to answer the question "why did this person get cancer and that person didn't?" We know that at least 80% of women will have an HPV infection at some point in their lives, but the percentage of those women who actually get cervical cancer is small. Unfortunately, even though it's small, it's still a crap shoot for which ones are which, so even though it's statistically small, it's still terrifying to those who can do nothing but wait to find out which camp they fall into. Successful treatment of cervical cancer lowers the death toll even more due to regular pap smears, but why do some people get cancer from their cancer-causing strain of HPV and others pass the virus through their system? According to this article, some women have certain gene variations that makes their bodies better able to mount an immune response to an HPV infection. Knowing which of us has this ability and which of us don't can significantly improve the chances of those who don't.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090312174739.htm

Now, once you have HPV, there is a screening process to let us know that we have HPV, hopefully before it turns into full-blown cancer. The FDA has just approved a new DNA test for HPV. For a long time, the Pap smear was all the defense we had. I don't know off the top of my head when we knew that cervical cancer was caused by HPV, but since HPV was so easy to catch, the medical community just assumed that, as women, we would eventually get it, so they just screened us for cancer as part of a regular maintenance checkup. The Pap smear detected "abnormal" cells, which could range from just random wierdness in cells on the cervix to cancerous lesions, and everything in between. The goal was to detect the abnormalities that would eventually turn into cancer before they turned into cancer. And this process was, and is, pretty good. Women in first world countries who get regular pap smears have a massively significantly higher chance of surviving cervical cancer than women in third world countries who do not get screened.

But, eventually, someone came up with a test to find out if those abnormal cells were, in fact, caused by HPV, as opposed to just general cell wierdness, and therefore likely to turn into cancer if untreated. It is recommended that women over 30 get this test no matter what, but it has been my personal experience that doctors don't give the test unless you have any kind of abnormal results for your pap smear, but that they will automatically do the test when you get abnormal results. We call this a DNA test, and it is, but it really can only tell us 1) do we have an HPV infection (if the answer is no, we assume it's something else) and 2) is our strain of HPV "high risk" or "low risk". It does not tell us which strain of HPV we have, specifically.

But now, the FDA has approved a test that will identify, specifically, if your high-risk strain of HPV is 16 or 18, the two strains that are responsible for 70% of cancer cases and the two high-risk strains that are found in Gardasil, the only FDA approved vaccine (Gardasil does have competitors that are approved in other countries, but not here).

The company who manufactures this test say that it should be arriving in doctor's offices within the next 3 months. The idea for this test is, like the genetic discovery, to customize our healthcare. If we know for sure that we have one of these strains of HPV, even if we have not begun showing cellular breakdown, our doctors can recommend more frequent pap smears to keep an eye on the infection, thereby catching it even sooner than before, and it will also tell us if our body has been able to clear the strain entirely for those who test positive at first but test negative later.
http://health.usnews.com/blogs/on-women/2009/03/13/new-hpv-test-to-detect-cervical-cancer-strains.html

And the final piece of news is about preventing an HPV infection all together. Gardasil protects against 16 and 18, the strains responsible for 70% of cases of cervical cancer, and against 6 and 11, the strains responsible for 90% of the cases of warts. A new vaccine, currently called V503, protects against all 4 of those, plus 5 more cancer-causing strains. For those who had not learned how the vaccine actually works, this article explains very simply and succinctly. The vaccine contains proteins that form a hollow sphere that resembles an HPV virus, but doesn't actually contain the virus itself, so you will not get HPV from this vaccine. But because it *looks* like HPV, it forces our immune systems to create antibodies against HPV because our bodies *think* they're being attacked by HPV. That way, by the time a real HPV virus comes in contact with our immune system, we already have antibodies in our system to repell the virus.

This new vaccine is currently undergoing clinical trials, which means that it won't be available on the public market for a few years. Like Gardasil, it will be initially targeted at women ages 9-26 because the the most HPV infections occur in women ages 15-25. If you are a healthy, non-pregnant female age 16 to 26, with a history of no abnormal pap smears, you are eligible to participate in the study and the article gives a phone number to call for more information. The study will give women one of two shots. You will either get Gardasil or you will get this new vaccine. Either way, you will get vaccinated against HPV (and for free, I might add). It requires office visits every few months for 7-months up to 3.5 years that will include pelvic exams and HPV screenings. If I were within the eligible age range, I'd *so* sign up for this!
http://insciences.org/article.php?article_id=3271

http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/34429/
Here is a link to an article that goes into some very technical stuff about the latest research on how HPV actually turns into cancer. It talks about how the virus interrupts a particular protein in the cell whose job it is to repair damage or initiate cell death in the event the damage is too great. By interrupting this process, this allows the cell to continue replicating after being infected, thereby spreading the cancer to the surrounding tissue.

Knowledge of how these viruses work is what will enable us to more effectively target our treatment research. This breakthrough is important, not just because it will aid in the treatment of cervical, vaginal, penile and anal cancers, but because it implies that other viruses are also responsible for tumors and cancers and can greatly increase our effectiveness at treating cancer and eliminating tumors and cancers entirely, not just cervical cancer. The treatments that come out of research like this can potentially eradicate the cancerous cells before they become cancer and without such dangerous post-cancer treatments like chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, and all with a higher success rate too.

Two articles this time for which my reaction is "uh, yeah!"

http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/health/2009/feb/Gardasil-Not-to-Blame-in-Hospitalization-of-Spanish-Teens-.html - Recently, 2 Spanish teenagers were hospitalized just hours after receiving Gardasil in a new mandatory Spanish program. Health personnel assumed it was a tainted batch of vaccine and immediately recalled every dose from that batch, but continued to administer shots from other batches. A European-based investigative team concluded that both cases were completely unrelated to Gardasil, although they continue to investigate these illnesses.

As this article also points out, there have been a handful of coincidental illnesses of women and teens who have received the shot, and every single case of "serious" illness as been ruled to be not related to Gardasil. All cases that were determined to be the fault of Gardasil were nothing more than the expected side effects already warned of by Merk and healthcare personnel. The European investigative team has conclusively declared that, in addition to Gardasil not causing these 2 girls' hospitalization, the benefits of the HPV vaccine outweigh the risks. Not that this will hush the dissenters and conspiracy theorists, but it is yet one more pile of evidence on a mounting pile of evidence that claims Gardasil is safe and necessary in the face of nothing more than coincidental timing for the opposing side.

http://www.smartbrief.com/news/aanp/storyDetails.jsp?issueid=39EB1CBE-07A2-4E37-9F5A-E366FAEB7023&copyid=5E69275A-F799-46D5-BBE6-E5D5874B554D - Researchers have discovered that school-based sex-ed that is "active" is more effective than "passive" school-based sex-ed in preventing STD transmission. Well, duh. And both are significanty more effective than putting your fingers in your kids ears and your hands over their eyes and shouting "lalalala!"

But, as is the case with evolution, it's not a single piece of evidence that makes the argument nor damns the opposition. It's piles and piles of evidence all added together that make the case. Here are a couple of more straws for the haystacks.

http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/2171512/

And on the hopeful front for HPV, there is currently research being done on something called Listeria monocytogenes to deliver a tumor-specific antigen fusion protein.

"Pre-clinically, bioengineered attenuated Listeria that secrete Advaxis' proprietary fusion protein have the ability to generate a robust immune response, break immune tolerance to cancer and produce an unusually strong and effective multi-level therapeutic immune response to existing cancer and other diseases. ... The Company's proprietary antigen fusion protein technology stimulates innate immunity: both arms of the adaptive cellular immune system, suppresses regulatory T-cells that inhibit many vaccines in the function of activated tumor-killing cells and has other anti-tumor effects."

What makes this so exciting is that this research is to develop a therapeutic vaccine (as opposed to prophylactic vaccines currently on the market) that would treat women who ALREADY HAVE cervical cancer as a result of HPV. The limitation to the current Gardasil vaccine is that it doesn't do anything for women who have already been exposed to those strains of HPV. Since older women are assumed to have more chance to be exposed, we are discouraged from getting the vaccine, if only because the FDA hasn't approved it so insurance won't cover it, making it cost-prohibitive to many of us. The pap smear has been great for early detection of pre-cancerous cells once we already have HPV, and early detection is responsible for the high success rate in treating cancer and cervical dysplasia.

But for those statistically few women who do not respond to the treatment, or do not detect it early enough, this would be fantastic to be able to give them a shot that contains a vaccine that goes into the body and actively attacks the tumor cells as well as boosting the body's own ability to fight the cancer.

Yay science!

Although HPV is really my pet virus-research project, and I don't know the details of HSV nearly as well, I still come across news pertaining to the other STDs in my searches. Today, I found word of a topical vaginal cream that prevents HSV transmission for up to one week after application in studies done on mice.

This is very exciting and very hopeful news. It still needs to undergo human testing, and there is some concern that it will not be helpful at all (and possibly harmful) to pregnant women, but c'mon, a cream that women can put on up to a week before intercourse that prevents Herpes?!? How cool is that?

And there is some possibility that it might help prevent HIV too!

Yay science! Now for the next stage in testing ... here's hoping it lives up to its potential! Can you imagine a world where this cream works, it prevents HSV and HIV, and the carrageenan or SPL7013 works against HPV? We are actually on the road to eradicating sexually transmitted infections, although it's still a long journey ahead.

http://www.healthnews.com/family-health/sexual-health/new-cream-may-prevent-herpes-2497.html

Current Mood: hopeful

http://newsstore.smh.com.au/apps/previewDocument.ac?docID=GCA00920723CLS

A company in Australia, called Cellscreen, is currently working on a Home HPV test for women. They have undergone beta testing in Australia and are beginning the process for FDA approval in the US. The current most common method for detecting HPV infections in women in the US is the pap smear, which was developed in the 1920s and requires a tissue sample from the cervix, obtained by scraping the cervix with a spatula or brush. This is one of the most uncomfortable routine procedures women have to go through and many women avoid their annual OB/GYN visit because of the discomfort and the embarassment. 50% of cervical cancer patients have never had a pap smear. This procedure, however, has been highly effective in catching cervical cancer in stages early enough to respond to treatment. The downside is that it apparently has a 15-20% false negative rate (meaning that 15-20% of women who actually have the early stages of cervical cancer or dysplasia get a negative test result and leave without knowing they are infected), and according to this company's investor brochure (so take it with a grain of salt), some research indicates the pap smear has less than a 70% efficacy rate.

This new test, called the TamPap (short for Tampon and Papilloma), allows women to insert any brand of tampon they choose, remove it, then send it to a lab via mail, where a DNA test, which is more effective than the current pap smear test, is performed and the results sent back either by phone or mail.

"The presence of human cells on the tampon is confirmed by a beta-actin detection step. A PCR based DNA test can reliably reveal the presence of HPV and of any high risk HPV genotypes. ... HPV DNA is only prsent in small amounts. The DNA must therefore be amplified using standard DNA amplification processes to provide sufficient DNA to yield interpretable results. ... The Cellscreen screening assay uses biphasic real time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) to detect the presense of human papillomavirus DNA. This RT-PCR screening utilises a variation of SPF primer sets published a decade ago and Styo9 dye to show a simple positive/negative result. The typing process can then identifh which, if any, of the fifteen high risk HPV genotypes (namely 16, 18, 31, 33, 35, 39, 45, 51, 52, 56, 58, 59, 68, 73, and 82) and two moderate-high risk types (66 and 70) are present in a sample. This process can identify multiple HPV genotypes, if present in a single sample"

This test is designed, not to replace the pap smear, but to compliment it. The DNA test only tells the patient whether she has an HPV infection, but it does not detect the presence of cancer or lesions. If you have the ability to know that you have an active HPV infection, you can increase your watch for cancer, and if you know that you do not currently have an active HPV infection, you can decrease your watch to the suggested pap smear of every 2 years with more frequent DNA tests - providing there is a cost and time-efficient way to do that, such as this new home test provides.

The reason why this is such important news is thanks to our last president's goodbye to women. Medical practitioners are no longer required to give a pap test, or any other procedure, if it goes against their religious beliefs. As the company says in their press release, "The process also is complementary to the work of the medical practitioner who now is no longer required to perform an invasive and time consuming cervical scrape to test for HPV." The company is also designing their marketing techniques to reach those women who avoid their pap or OB/GYN visit entirely due to discomfort, or embarassment. This could significantly reduce the mortality rates (fortunately, already low in the US) of cervical cancer.

Some more information about HPV and cervical cancer:

In the US, 50% of women diagnosed with cervical cancer have never been screened and 10-20% have not been screened in the last 5 years. Additionally, 30% of women with cervical cancer were screened but returned a false negative result from their pap test.
Globally, HPV has a prevalence of around 9-13% of the total population (male and female), equating to approximately 725 million infected people. In the USA alone there are 6.2 million new cases each year, and 15-20 million American women are infected with HPV at any one time.
Young women in their early twenties pose the highest risk of infection. This decreases in women over thirty, but these older women tend to suffer more persistent infections and have increased chance of developing cervical cancer. A recent study has reported that women aged between 40-50 years who test positive for HPV have a greater than 20% chance of developing cervical cancer within 10 years

There are several HPV tests on the market at present with the most successful being the Digene Inc Hybrid Capture, 2-High Risk HPV DNA test, the only HPV test that has obtained USA FDA Approval, and the PapilloCheck and Amplicor tests in Europe.

The majority of the products that are in development and on the market utilize samples taken during a normal pap smear test where cells are taken from the cervix using a speculum and brush technique and the sample stored in a thin prep liquid based preserver and are only available through a medical practitioner (liquid based cytology).

Approximately 92% of the annual 60 million pap smear tests conducted in the USA today are completed using liquid based cytology. In Europe there are approximately 45-55million pap smear tests conducted annually which is expected to grow with the increasing emphasis on screening and prevention techniques.

Two self sampling HPV tests are also available CerviScreen and Fournier's Feminine Multi-Test. The Digene HPV test is currently the only test approved in the USA for the detection of high risk HPV.

Other companies currently developing HPV DNA tests that are in development and expected to be released onto the market in the next two years are SensiGen, ValiRX and NorChip. Fournier's Feminine Multi-test is a self sampling test that utilizes a tampon like device to collect cells from the cervix. This test is designed to be undertaken in a supervised environment to achieve cell samples that are of a higher quality.

In comparison to other tests available in the market Cellscren's Tam Pap self sampling home based test has the following competitive advantages:·

The Tam Pap Test can successfully and simultaneously detect and genotype high risk strains of HPV (particularly 16 and 18) using a minimally invasive, private and painless technique, whereas other tests (including the only current FDA approved test) rely on pap smear type procedures to take cervical swabs and are more limited in the number of HPV genotypes they detect;·
The Tam Pap Test can also successfully detect low risk strains of HPV (including types 6 and 11) which can cause genital warts and other infections;·
The Tam Pap Test does not require the initiation of a pap smear to collect cells for analysis. The Tam Pap Test uses a simple tampon to collect DNA that can be 100% accurately analysed for the presence of HPV;·
The Tam Pap Test will be positioned in the market place for women as an affordable and cost effective test making it a practical alternative for women;·
The Tam Pap process can be implemented without access to a physician in areas where immediate availability is difficult to obtain;·
The Tam Pap process is secure and safe to use and will potentially promote increased levels of usage due to the important fact that privacy can be maintained

Current Mood: hopeful

http://www.newsweek.com/id/178660

There has been a new link discovered between the Herpes virus and brain tumors. Let me be perfectly clear here. This does NOT, I repeat, NOT mean that herpes causes brain tumors. At this stage, the relationship between the cytomegalovirus and the tumors is uknown.

What is known is only that in nearly two dozen samples analyzed, nearly all of them were " teeming" with CMV. Researchers are net yet sure if the virus causes the tumors, or their coincidental presence merely enhances the progression of the tumors in some way, and the answer to this question will be a long time coming.

Cancer has been the big bogeyman for several eras. It has eluded detection, treatment, and cures. For a long time, no one knew what really caused cancer, why one person would get it and another person wouldn't. The medical community has had some of these answers for a while now, but it still strikes fear into the hearts of the general public who does not understand science or who does not keep up with medical research, or who are forced to face their own mortality. It still has an aura of mystery to it, why me, why mom, why now?

But with diligence, we are slowly unraveling the mystery. We know the causes of several types of cancer, but we still don't yet know why some people manage to fight and win, and others succumb. The article made a slight mistake, it cited only 3 types of cancer with known causes: liver cancer (Hepatitis B), and lymphoma (Epstein-Barr virus), and the article points out only cervical cancer that is caused by HPV, although we now know HPV to be the cause of genital cancers in general, as well as many cases of head and neck cancers.

This may sound frightening at first, that yet again we are faced with the possibility that a "sexually" transmitted disease that was once thought to be non-fatal, merely profoundly annoying, could actually be lethal. But first, I'd like to point out that brain tumors are not actually all that common, and that the incidents of brain tumors have not increased with this discovery.

Second, I'd like to point out how exciting this discovery is, because it, as the article says, opens up a whole new avenue of inquiry for one of the most intractable cancer which is almost always fatal. With this discovery, medical science has a new direction to look in for prevention and treatment of an illness that, frankly, has been kicking our asses. Not only does it shine light into the area of this particular study, but combined with the HPV-cervical cancer link (and subsequent links to all the other genital cancers and the now-leading cause of oral/throat cancers), it is forcing the medical science research community to overcome their bias against the virus-causes-cancer theories and it opens a whole new realm of possibilities for research for a lot of different illnesses that have been kicking our asses. Although there are several different causes for cancer, including tobacco, pollution, radiation, etc., some continue to elude us and discoveries like these make it progressively more difficult to continue putting our fingers in our ears and singing "lalalala, it's not a virus, it's not a virus!"

This story also helps to remind us to have more respect for those STDs that are "just annoying" and the people who suffer from them. We can't take a cavalier attitude about something that just happens to not be immediately fatal and we can't condemn people who suffer from illnesses because of a bias that says they're "dirty" or they "deserved" it because of their behaviour or to overlook their suffering because of the misassumption that the disease is "just annoying" (have I ever mentioned how much I hate the rationalization that any STD is "just annoying" simply because you don't keel over and die immediately?). HIV is scary, but it's also pretty easy to avoid, now that we know so much about it.

But HPV and herpes are not easy so avoid. I put the word "sexually", from sexually transmitted disease" above in quotes because both HPV and herpes are so easy to catch that you don't really require sexual behaviour. But up until recently, both viruses were not taken very seriously by society in general, because neither one killed, or so we thought. Since the advent of the pap smear, the mortality rate of cervical cancer has dropped like a stone in a deep pool. And that's fantastic. But it's not the end of the story. It could have been, but someone out there continued to research, continued to investigate, continued to say "that's not good enough, we should not have to live with the threat of cancer, no matter how small". And now we have the vaccine. And better diagnostic tools are on the way.

And now, we have learned of a link between CMV, a virus that is found in approximately 80% of the population (similar to HPV) and previously thought to be "harmless", and one of the most aggressive forms of brain tumor we know. To say "well, the odds are high that you'll probably get it sooner or later, so just don't worry about it, there's nothing you can do anyway" is not only insensitive, it's also incorrect. There is plenty we can do, including education and research funding, not to mention taking care of our own bodies and modifying our behaviour to minimize risk - although we can't live in a bubble, we don't have to throw all caution to the wind either. There is already research being done into a vaccine and treatment medication for the tumors using the CMV research. Science gives us hope. I do not put my faith in science because I do not need to. Rigorous research and testing provides answers ... slowly, cumberously sometimes, with plenty of false starts and blind alleys, but answers nonetheless.

http://www.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUSN0928197520090109

"NEW YORK, Jan 9 (Reuters) - U.S. health regulators have again withheld approval for the use of Merck & Co Inc's (MRK.N) Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine by women aged 27 to 45, asking for longer-term clinical data, the drugmaker said on Friday. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended Merck submit data when a 48-month study on a test group has been completed. The agency also withheld approval in June on Merck's initial application that was based on data collected through an average of 24 months.

...

"Gardasil's efficacy drops sharply once females have been exposed to HPV and this is probably the genesis of the problem with the older female population that Merck has been pushing for in this new application," Sanford Bernstein analyst Tim Anderson said in a research note."

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200901091059DOWJONESDJONLINE000637_FORTUNE5.htm

"In 2007, Merck released results of a study showing that Gardasil was effective at preventing infection by certain HPV strains in women up to age 45. The study showed a 91% reduction in cases of persistent infection, low-grade cervical abnormalities and pre-cancers, and external genital lesions caused by the four HPV strains, versus a placebo vaccine.

The study measured only incidents caused by the targeted HPV strains that weren't already present in women at the start of the study or during the dosing regimen. The vaccine is given in three doses over six months.

In comparison, an earlier study in females aged 16 to 23 showed Gardasil reduced these incidents by 96% versus placebo."

Visit http://www.plannedparenthood.com/ for information about events in your local area:

January is Cervical Cancer Awareness month. Come and learn about ways to protect yourself and loved ones. Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando is collaborating with the Orange County Library System to discuss information about Cervical Cancer and ways to prevent it. Gardasil, the HPV Vaccine, will be highlighted as well as ways to get the vaccine for FREE!

This event is free and open to the public. For your convenience, there will be four different informational sessions at various locations throughout the county.

Saturday, January 10th: Eatonville Branch at 11:00am

Saturday, January 10th: South Trail Branch at 2:30pm

Tuesday, January 13th: Alafaya Branch at 6:30pm

Wednesday, January 14th: Southeast Branch at 6:30pm

For more information, please feel free to call Lisa at 407-246-1788 ext. 113 or visit www.ocls.info

Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.

Tell-a-friend!

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Guided-Therapeutics-Inc-Submits-First/story.aspx?guid=%7B55887FA2-BBFE-498F-96DB-D891D618BF6B%7D

A company named Guided Therapeutics has submitted the first of a three-part process to obtain FDA approval for a new cervical cancer screening device. The FDA has already declared the technology to be "non-significant risk" by hospital institutional review boards.

Basically, the device is this little flashlight that you insert and shines light on the cervix. It then reads the lightwaves that bounce back and based on the scans of these lightwaves, it distinguishes between healthy and diseased cervical tissue. Unlike the PAP smear and the other HPV tests, it does not require a tissue sample or lab analysis and will give a diagnosis instantly. It also has the potential to be significantly more accurate than either the PAP or the HPV tests, our two current screening methods and more than 3,000 women have tested the prototypes with absolutely no instances of significant or unexpected adverse reactions.

This is very good news and I hope the approval comes soon. It would be such a relief to do away with PAP smears and to not be concerned that I don't have the money for the more expensive (and not often recommended) HPV test.

This is a great article about things you should do before you have sex for the first time - either your first time ever or your first time with this particular partner. This is one of those examples of things that all poly relationships require just to function at the basic level, but all sexual relationships of any model will be better for.

If you're not doing these things at the VERY least, you shouldn't be having sex at all. I don't care if you're poly, monogamous, swinger, "playing the field", or saving yourself for marriage. If your future includes any amount of sexuality with another person, you should be doing these things ... ALL of them, before engaging in any sexual act that can result in an STD or pregancy (and for those victims of Abstinance-Only Education, that means penis-in-vagina sex, oral sex, anal sex, and manual stimulation of the genitals):

(my personal comments are in italics and parentheses)

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/11/17/ten-things-to-do-before-you-have-sex

Ten Things To Do Before You Have Sex
by Karen Rayne

As a sexuality educator, I spend most of my time helping parents understand how to talk with their children and teenagers about sex, sexuality, gender, and all of the myriad issues that go along with those things. One question that parents often ask me is how to make sure their teenagers are ready to have sex. Putting aside issues of whether parents should have substantial input and control over their teenager's sexual activities, I found that parents were relying on goals that were far too vague. Parents want to make sure that their teenagers are mature enough, have good communication with their partners, understand the health and reproductive consequences, etc.

One parent lamented that she and her daughter had (what the mother thought were) great conversations about the need for all of these things, but that her daughter went ahead and had sex even though she never had good communication with her partner and ended up having unprotected sex. Was her daughter not listening to her? Pretending to go along and then choosing a different route? While those are possibilities, the more likely problem is that the daughter was not sure how to measure and assess her relationship to make sure that she had reached the goals she enthusiastically agreed with her mother were important.

And so, my list of ten concrete things that teenagers need to do before they have sex was born. Just to be clear, these are things to do before you have oral sex, sexual intercourse, or anything else that could get you pregnant or an STD.

1. Have an orgasm.
Yes, before you start having sex, you should give yourself an orgasm. It's important to know what feels good to you before you can show another person what feels good to you.

2. Know the other person's sexual history.
And I don't mean just vaginal intercourse for this one!
(A great reference guide to use is the Sexual Health And History Form)

3. Know the other person's STD status, as well as your own.
The only way to know this for sure is to be tested! And if you're both virgins, well, you're not going to be for long. You might as well get that scary first STD testing out of the way so you'll know what to expect next time around.
(this is why some poly people trade paperwork - it's not an assumption that your partner is dirty, it's merely a tool to make sure both parties have exactly the same understanding of the situation ... some STDs can be passed through skin contact, not penetration or fluid transfer, so you and your partner can technically be a virgin and still have an STD, and just as likely, you can not know you have one and wouldn't it suck to pass that on to your partner just because you didn't know?)

4. Talk about exactly what STD protection and birth control you will be using.
These two issues go hand-in-hand (for heterosexual couples), and it is the domain of both parties to be intimately involved.
(it's not any single person's responsibility - it's both/all of your responsibility, so make sure you both/all are contributing to your precautions)

5. If you are part of a heterosexual couple, talk about what happens if the woman gets pregnant.
Here are a few options to talk about, in alphabetical order: abortion, adoption, raising the kid alone, raising the kid together. With the understanding that reality is different than the theoretical, make sure you're both on the same theoretical page.

6. Have your best friend's blessing.
We can rarely see someone we're in love with clearly. It is often our best friends who can see our lovers and our potential lovers for who they really are. Listen to what your best friend has to say, and take it to heart. If it's not what you wanted to hear, give it some time. Wait a month. A good relationship will be able to withstand another month before having sex. Then ask a different friend, and see what they have to say.
(if your relationship is destined to last forever, waiting a month or two won't kill you!)

7. Meet your partner's parents.
At the very least, make sure you know why you haven't met your them. The best sex comes out of knowing someone well, and knowing someone's family is an important part of knowing them. (Even if they're really, really different from their family.)
(this is actually more important that one might think - we are all products of our environment and upbringing, and meeting the family and other friends contributes a lot of data to the whole picture of who your partner is)

8. Be comfortable being naked in front of each other.
You don't actually have to strip down in broad daylight to make sure you've reached this milestone, but it sure helps!

9. Have condoms on hand.
Make sure they fit right, that they're within the expiration date, and that they haven't been exposed to extreme conditions (like the inside of a really hot car). Condoms should be part of any respectful sexual relationship. There need be no assumption of hook ups outside of the relationship, just an assumption of good sexual habits being made and kept.

10. Make sure that your partner has done all of these things too.
Part of a happy, healthy sexual encounter is taking care of everyone's emotional needs and physical health. Both people need to pay attention to themselves and to their partner. That way each person has two people looking out for them. It's just the best way to do things.

Carrageenan is one of my pet subjects - a product I promote based on early research that seems to imply that it's a strong inhibitor for HPV. You can read my previous posts by clicking on the sti tag over on the left sidebar of my journal or going to http://joreth.livejournal.com/tag/sti, and here are some links to the posts I make specifically about carrageenan:

http://joreth.livejournal.com/21110.html - The basic info for carrageenan
http://joreth.livejournal.com/49944.html - Updated info on the testing for carrageenan

In the last post, I talked about how carrageenan is actually being studied for its *anti-HIV* properties and its anti-HPV properties were sort of discovered in the process. Since these trials are for anti-HIV properties, they are most likely ignoring or overlooking anything to do with HPV. Since the anti-HPV properties have been noticed, I assume that *some* data is being collected, but I have no idea how much at this point.

Out of the five products being tested at the time of my last article on the subject, BufferGel®, Carraguard®, PRO 2000®, C31G, and cellulose sulfate (2, 44), the cellulose sulfate (going by the name of CONRAD) failed its trials and I was rooting for BufferGel because it seemed to have the most amount of applicability. It seemed to prevent against pretty much all types of STDs and served as a contraceptive, whereas all the others only prevented some STDs or didn't work as a contraceptive, or a combination.

Well, Carraguard has now failed its test as a preventative for HIV, sadly:

http://www.docguide.com/news/content.nsf/news/852571020057CCF685257515007476D0

This does not seem to invalidate its anti-HPV properties (as I said, they're really focusing on the anti-HIV potential and no mention was made of HPV or HSV in this article), but since its primary purpose was to prevent HIV, and the anti-HPV effects were less important or secondary, Carraguard will probably not make it to market at all.

I would like to think that the researchers would take a look at the anti-HPV and anti-HSV properties that Carraguard has and do some more testing with a focus on that direction, and then try to market it for those purposes, but, unfortunately, HIV is the big bogeyman right now, even though we have made enormous strides in the quality of life for HIV patients in recent years. I fear that the pharmaceutical companies will think that there is simply not enough profit in marketing a topical gel that only covers HPV and HSV but not HIV, especially since Merk has publicly declared a loss of profits with Gardasil, and all pharmaceutical companies are reconsidering the profitability of all vaccines at the moment.

Unfortunately, this might leave only the CAM (complimentary and alternative medicine) folks to pick up the slack - if they do at all. I say "unfortunately" because CAM, by definition, does not have robust testing and evidence to support its claims ... even on the rare occasion that they're actually right*, and I would hate for a legitimate medicinal product to get lost in the CAM shuffle.

*Once a product achieves the robust testing and evidence to support its claims, it becomes "traditional" or science-based medicine and is no longer "complimentary / alternative medicine", by definition, so it's not that CAM is always wrong, it's that CAM either has A) no evidence to back its claims or B) has evidence to the contrary. In the case of A, it can be further tested and proven effective, but that removes it from the CAM classification.

I've journaled about Carrageenan a few times, and how effective it seems to be at preventing HPV, even though it's still in trials, apparently, all signs very strongly point towards its effectiveness. Now it appears as though there's another product being tested. Where carrageenan just happens to be an ingredient already commonly found in lubes, this product is created and being tested specifically for it's anti-HIV, anti-HSV, and anti-HPV properties.

http://newsstore.smh.com.au/apps/previewDocument.ac?docID=GCA00910884SPL

"Showing that VivaGel has activity against all major clinically relevant strains of HPV tested so
far, in particular those strains not covered by the current cervical cancer vaccines, further
strengthens the growing body of evidence demonstrating the efficacy of SPL7013 against several
important STIs."

The active ingredient, SPL7013, so far is inhibiting HPV-16 and -18, which are the two cancer-causing strains found in Gardasil, the Merk vaccine currently approved in the US, which make up 70% of the cancer cases. It also inhibits the two warts-causing strains, HPV-6 and -11 that Gardasil inhibits.

PLUS it is showing signs of inhibiting HPV-31 and -45, which cause 4% of cancers.

This is fantastic news, especially as we are starting to hear rumblings about vaccines becoming too expensive to produce for the vaccine companies to continue carrying. If they start discontinuing vaccines because of the cost, we will need some other line of defense, and a topical microbe, particularly if it can simply be added to lubricants, is a very convenient method of application.

So, until VivaGel makes it to the market, everyone go out and buy some Carrageenan lube!

As most of my readers should, by now, know, I'm quite the champion for the the HPV vaccination and vaccinations in general. So I often get a lot of cranks spreading fear and false rumors as to the dangers of vaccines. Of course there are some dangers with vaccines, the medical community and its champions have never denied that. But the risk/reward ratio makes them, not only worth the risk, but our duty as members of a society to accept the risk because the risk is actually very minimal. You're more likely to get struck by lightning on the way to the vaccination clinic than to die or contract autism from a vaccine.

So, now that other countries are introducing the HPV vaccines into their societies, some of which are making them mandatory, these kinds of claims are getting picked up all over the place. Which is annoying, but actually a good thing. Because it means that other countries, totally independent of the U.S. and totally independent of Big Pharma are having to investigate.

And guess what? They're all showing that the vaccines are not some scary evil plot by Big Pharma to kill off people (frankly, even if it was a plot to kill off young girls, it's a pretty sucky plot - even worse than the plot to kill Austin Powers by leaving him in a room with evil sea bass with lasers strapped to their heads), nor is it simple incompetence making an unsafe product in the rush to make a profit.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24748394-23289,00.html In Australia, "Only three of the 25 evaluated schoolgirls had probable hypersensitivity to the quadrivalent human papilloma virus vaccine after 380,000 doses had been administered in schools," and such reactions were typical during any mass vaccination effort, regardless of what was being injected. "One study estimated that if 80 per cent of eligible US adolescent females were to receive a saline injection ... three per 100,000 adolescents would require emergency care for asthma or allergy within 24 hours of vaccination," the paper says.

Now, let's just say that all 25 girls who were suspected of being "hypersensitive" actually did have allergic reactions. That's 25 girls out of 380,000. Three hundred and eighty THOUSAND. That's .00066% of girls. In my last rant against the conspiracy theorists, I quoted some facts from the U.S. study, which estimated a .00022% chance of death with .075% experiencing minor side effects common with receiving a shot no matter what's in it.

As an evil plot, it's probably the lamest plot ever concieved. As a study of incompetence, it royally fails on the dumbass scale. The HPV vaccine is about as safe as vaccines can get, with risk levels lower than simply living, and the benefit is preventing cancer and all studies so far, no matter who conducts them, are pointing in this direction.

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/apwire/0100f22694e88c793f51b43295ec9a85.htm

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Hologic-Releases-Results-CervistaTM-HPV/story.aspx?guid=%7B8131E2BB-A74F-4790-BBA9-17BA35200803%7D

A new test created by Hologic for detecting the 14 types of HPV that cause cancer in women over age 30 has shown "100 PERCENT ACCURACY at detecting the HPV strain that poses the highest risk of cancer. Cervista showed 92 percent accuracy at detecting a second strain that is often linked to cervical cancer."

The proposed use of this test is as a general screen for HPV in combination with a pap test for women over 30.

And a competing company, AVC, has also come out with an HPV test:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Arbor-Vita-Presents-New-Data/story.aspx?guid=%7BA2481E52-E0C5-43DC-A706-9E233DE7D418%7D

(There was a conference in Europe today where a bunch of companies unveiled their latest findings, which is why I'm getting all these HPV updates today)

Current Mood: hopeful

I haven't been making posts for a couple of days, or responding to them, and it will be several more days before I have the time to really come back to LJ. But I've been keeping an eye on the progress of the Merk vaccine, Gardasil, and the latest news is great news, so I had to share it as soon as possible!

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/heart-to-heart/2008/11/14/hpv-vaccine-for-men-its-about-time.html

"Finally, two years after it was approved for use in young women, a vaccine against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV) has now been shown to be safe and effective in protecting young men as well. Merck's vaccine Gardasil cut infections caused by the four most dangerous strains of this virus by 45 percent and reduced the occurrence of HPV-induced warts by 90 percent, according to a new study involving more than 4,000 male volunteers age 16 to 26. The next step is for the Food and Drug Administration to give its blessing."

The FDA also approves the claim that Gardasil can prevent cancer of the vulva and vagina, in addition to its claim of preventing cervical cancer: http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/fda-grants-gardasil-two-new-indications/2008-09-15

Unfortuantely, Merk lost the bid to market the vaccine to older women, although "off-label" is still an option (which means that you can talk a doctor into giving you something that isn't FDA approved for the category you fit into, but isn't banned either, though it will probably not be covered by insurance since it's not FDA approved to make the claim that it's good for you).

Some more articles about this are here:

http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/phase-iii-gardasil-prevents-hpv-men/2008-11-13
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/11/13/hpv-vaccine-men.html
http://www.fiercevaccines.com/comment/reply/8021 (ignore the idiot in the comments who claims that vaccines cause cancer and girls are dropping dead all over the place)
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/nov/15/4u-doctors-warn-of-hpv-link-to-developing-oral-can/ - yet another article indicating that HPV is linked to oral cancers

And for the conspiracy theorists and people who fear the over-hyped claims of danger related to side effects from the vaccine: http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/gardasil-remarkably-safe-despite-anaphylaxis/2008-09-03?utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss&cmp-id=OTC-RSS-FP0 claims that Gardasil is "remarkably safe despite anaphylactic reactions". (The report that this article references is here: http://www.slate.com/id/2198325 and goes over the pros and cons of giving the vaccine)

( And here is a letter I'm sending to my friends and family to educate them a little about HPV and the upcoming vaccine approval for boys. Please feel free to forward this to your own family and friends. )

I may be updating this post when I have more time, rather than making a whole new post about the same stuff, just so ya know.

I have been in sort of an ongoing discussion with someone about how safe it is to have multiple sexual partners. He insists on a very basic math formula that simply says "more people = more risk". I maintain that there are several variables to the safety probability, and one of the most important variables is how well you know the other person and what their own criteria for taking on additional partners is.

In an open and inclusive poly network, where regular testing is done before a new partner is added, I maintain that more people does not necessarily = more risk, as long as those people do, in fact, require tests beforehand and do, in fact, notify all people when an incidence does come up.

If you have 3 people in a group, he believes, this is inherently safer than having 5 people in a group because that is two more people who the group has to monitor to ensure they are following the safety rules.

However, if you have 3 people in a group, one of whom is prone to cheating or taking on partners without testing first, I state that this is inherently more dangerous than a group of 5 people who have shown a consistent pattern of testing and notification. As the number of people rises, at least within a certain range, the risk level does not, in my opinion, significantly increase when all people consistently use regular testing and disclosure.

To illustrate my point, a couple of researchers actually wrote a book about it. Well, they wrote a book about sexuality and within the book was a segment on HIV risk for a variable number of partners. It's called With Pleasure: Thoughts on the Nature of Human Sexuality by Paul R. Abramson & Steven D. Pinkerton. The premise of this math formula is that each person's HIV status is unknown and the partners are randomly selected from the population at large.

According to the calculations (which use math symbols that I can't enter here because I write in plain text editors), "the risk resulting from 100 protected [sexual] contacts is about the same as that arising from only 10 unprotected [sexual] contacts". They go on to say:

"For sexually active individuals with more than one partner, the situation is slightly more complicated. Although the probability of becoming infected as a result of sexual contact with any one of these partners can be calculated using [this equation], the rules of probability calculus prevent us from simply adding them together to arrive at the overall risk of infection. ...

As might be expected, the probability of infection arising from N one-night stands is greater than the risk from N contacts with a single partner (monogamy). However, the difference is not nearly as great as one might suppose. ... the relative risk reduction achieved by engaging in N sexual contacts with a single partner rather than N one-night-stands is greater in the high infectivity condition (a=0.01) and increases as the number of one-night stands gets large, but is less than 40% in any case. In contrast, the relative risk reduction due to the consistent use of condoms is about 90% regardless of the infectivity or number of partners. In other words, in this situation even the most dramatic change in the number of sexual partners - from 100 to 1 - provides LESS protection than does the simple expedient of always wearing a condom.

These results highlight the inadequacy of educational programs that focus on getting people to limit the number of sexual partners as a means of reducing HIV risk. Although there are conditions for which this is sound advice (such as populations with a high prevalence of HIV and other STDs) the simple strategy of always using condoms is usually a superior means of reducing risk. ...

Finally, to return to the question posed at the beginning of this discussion: is everyone at risk? Obviously that depends on her sexual behaviour, including who she has sex with, what kind of sex, and whether or not her partners wear condoms for penetrative activities. For the sake of argument, suppose the infectivity is 1 in 1,000 and she selects 10 male partners at random from a population in which 1 out of every 200 men is infected with HIV. If she has intercourse 100 times with each of these men and never uses condoms, she faces an infection risk of 0.0047 (in other words, out of 211 such women, we would expect one to become infected with HIV as a consequence of her sexual behaviour). If, instead, she and her partners used condoms for every act of intercourse, her risk would be reduced by about 90%, to 0.0005 (1 out of 2010)."

The part that really impacts the poly community is that all of these scenarios and formulas are done with choosing a partner totally at random from the entire population without knowing his or her HIV status. With regular condom use, regular testing, and open and honest communication about status, the probability of becoming infected with HIV drops to a very small number close to zero. With a known status of HIV-negative, and no exposure to HIV since testing, the probability drops to a small number close to zero even without the condoms.

This, of course, only affects those STDs that are fluid-borne, like HIV. The incidence of contact-borne STDs like Herpes is only partially reduced by condom use, not the 90% quoted above. And for the untestable or hard-to-test STDs like HPV, I assume we cannot significantly lower the incidence rate by changing the variable from "unknown status" to "known status", but none of that was discussed.

Anyway, this book sounds pretty fascinating and I plan to pick up a copy sometime soon. One of the other thoughts they propose in the book is that the primary purpose of sex has evolved to be pleasure and procreation is a by-product. When I did a search for the title, I didn't find any negative reviews of the book, no blog entries claiming they're hacks and peudo-scientists, so I'm curious to see the research they used to reach this conclusion. Here's the link to read what I quoted above, just click on the cover image and you will access a preview of the book that you can scroll through: https://amzn.to/2IInG7n

I found the coolest image on www.methings.com/podcasts/index.php?iid=3251 and I'm not putting it behind a cut because I think everyone should see it:

I just came across this PowerPoint presentation in my files. I don't know why I didn't post it before, but I'm going to now. It's a presentation that was given at the Merk convention just a month before they received official FDA approval for their vaccine, Gardasil. The topic is an instructional for what a diagnostician should know about HPV. It includes information like, what HPV is, how to recognize it, and how to deal with patients that have it.

Please view this and pass it along. You are also welcome to download this and attach it to emails if you have people who still open these kinds of files in emails, but a link to it is considered "safer".

http://www.theinnbetween.net/visions/livejournalpics/hpv-slides.pps

It's almost exclusively text, but I will warn you, about a quarter of the way through it are 3 or 4 explicit photos of what genital warts look like on various genital regions. Not Safe For Work.

http://takecaredownthere.org/

I'll post my reaction to this later, but now I'm sleepy. But this is a hilarious and informative site. It's delightfully awkward. Spread the word, especially to young people!

The next installment of my HPV updates.

Previous installments that include a more detailed background of HPV and its treatments are:
http://joreth.livejournal.com/65765.html - HPV responsible for Oral Cancers
http://joreth.livejournal.com/21110.html - Carrageenan as an HPV preventative
http://joreth.livejournal.com/49944.html - Possible treatments of HPV in testing phases
http://joreth.livejournal.com/20984.html - Central Florida testing options
http://joreth.livejournal.com/63666.html - Better information for Central Florida testing options
http://joreth.livejournal.com/65916.html - A rant about conspiracy theorists that includes actual statistics for the possible health risks of the HPV vaccine

And now, the latest:

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1932487620080319

FDA grants fast review of Gardasil for adult women

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Merck & Co on Wednesday said U.S. regulators have granted a priority review for the company's application to expand marketing of its Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine to women aged 27 through 45.

The designation means that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to make its decision on the marketing application within 6 months, rather than within the agency's typical 10-month review period.

Gardasil, one of Merck's fastest-growing products, is currently approved for girls and women nine through 26 years of age. It works by preventing infection with four sexually transmitted strains of the Human Papillomavirus that cause most cases of cervical cancer.

Leerink Swann analyst Seamus Fernandez called the priority review a positive surprise. In a research note, he predicted a "straightforward" regulatory review of the expanded marketing application due to the lack of serious side effects among adult women receiving Gardasil in clinical trials.

Gardasil had fourth-quarter global sales of $339 million, helping to drive Merck's total global revenue from vaccines to $1.1 billion.

Current Mood: hopeful

Now, I understand that it's only a small portion of HPV cases that actually develop into dysplasia, and from there to cancer. I understand that my chances of getting killed in a car wreck are higher than me dying from cervical cancer. But try telling someone facing this problem "but you're in the minority of people who suffer from this, so it's not a big deal and I shouldn't worry about it". You would deserve to get smacked.

So I spread this information about HPV because very few other people are. If it were getting nationwide coverage like HIV or the flu during flu season even, this virus wouldn't need people like me spreading the word about it. It's not intended to induce a panic because I feel I represent it fairly. I don't run around screaming "Everyone who has sex is going to DIE from HPV!" I present the facts using medical data from the CDC and other organizations whose sole purpose is to study this and notify the public. Those facts include the numbers which clearly show that our species is not in danger of extinction due to this virus. But it sure sucks to be one of the few to face this, especially when it is preventable and getting more so with new products like this vaccine.

And, of course, because I feel an obligation to spread this information, I get responses from the whacko conspiracy theorists. Here's one email exchange. Someone I emailed this to (part of a group mailing list) forwarded my email onto a friend of his. Here is the friend responding to the guy in my group list:

> Why would I be suspicious of this report? Well, I do wonder who funded the
> study that came to these conclusions...y'all be sure to get your shots now,
> ya hear...here is the first of eight mentions of Merck: The only available
> vaccine against HPV, made by Merck & Co. Inc., is currently given only to
> girls and young women. But Merck plans this year to ask government
> permission to offer the shot to boys.
>
> How thoughtful of them...come on boys, now you too can have a good dose of
> mercury. I guess they weren't killing enough people by just giving it to
> girls...OK, maybe it was just that profits were not high enough.

The guy in my group's response:

> Good points Mike. I'll pass them to the girl who sent it to me. I was
> cognizant that it was practically a commercial for Merck. I would never
> even consider using their poison. I almost didn't forward it. It's not
> the kind of thing I usually send out. I thought, however, if there is even
> a chance that there is something to it......people should know about it. My
> subscribers are, like you, capable of doing their own critical thinking and
> research.

My response:

Oh for crying out loud, you can't possibly think that vaccines are responsible for illness instead of the other way around? I've been following the development of this virus and the treatments for it since the early 90s and the Merk vaccine is totally valid and could potentially be a life-saver. The anti-vaccination conspiracies are harmful to our society because it creates a society incredibly susceptible to all those viruses that used to completely wipe out entire populations. As for the mercury concern specifically, mercury was phased out of all pediatric vaccines years ago and the 2 or 3 vaccines that still contain thimerosal (which contains the mercury), the amount in one dose of vaccine is less than a single serving of several types of seafood. And the idea that mercury is responsible for autism has been thoroughly debunked a long time ago.

I suggest you do some reading on the fallacies of conspiracy theories. Here's some to get you started:

http://tacit.livejournal.com/179766.html
http://tacit.livejournal.com/152991.html
http://tacit.livejournal.com/232528.html
http://tacit.livejournal.com/179766.html

The guy's friend's response:

"If you prefer to keep your head in the sand...so be it."

So, it's bad enough I got an email response claiming that Merk is trying to kill little girls by poisoning them with mercury in the vaccine, but now some yahoo has posted a link that "explains" the "serious medical results and death being linked with them(not to mention much data related to health complications from many other vaccines)."

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/one_less/Content?oid=637364

My response to that was:

"Before you get all conspiracy-theorist, try reading this:

http://tacit.livejournal.com/170918.html"

and, once I actually read the article, followed up with:

So you quote an article that admits the CDC dismissed the claims that the deaths were related to Gardrasil and were instead related to birth control pills (which have known consequences) and other medicines?

That reminds me of the article claiming the swingers convention were "inappropriate". One man was pissed off that the swingers convention happened in the hotel he was staying at with his family for vacation. He claimed people were walking around nude and participating in sexual activity in public and filed a report. The hotel staff, the layout of the hotel ballrooms, the security on active duty and the police investigator later all claimed that nothing actually happened.

Yet it made the news anyway.

"Headline News! Something was purported to happen, but evidence turns up that nothing actually happened. Just thought you all should know that nothing actually happened here"

There are often side effects with medicine, this is nothing new. Merk, like all pharm companies, clearly explain the possible risks involved with taking their product and all the cases of illness fell within the expected side effects.

The only reason we don't have polio anymore is because of mass vaccination, and we are only one generation away from iron lungs and leg braces. Until we find cures for many of the diseases that can kill us, vaccinations are our best defense by preventing us from getting it in the first place. Gardrasil is not the end-all-be-all, but it's one step among many in the fight against cancer. And now we understand that it's not just cervical cancer, which is a small portion of the cancer cases (although try telling someone facing it that it's not a big deal since they're a minority), but it's also responsible for several other types of cancer.

This is also a big advancement because, only a few types of cancer have a "cause". We know that tobacco causes cancer, but not everyone who smokes gets it. Now we know that several other types of cancers are caused by a virus. The more we understand about cancer and the causes of each type, the closer we get to eliminating it, or at least reducing it to a non-life-threatening disease."

Here's what pisses me off about the article above. According to this source - the source the "concerned" person is using to make his claim that the vaccine is harmful - 5 million people have taken the vaccine. Let me repeat that. 5 MILLION. Out of those 5 million, less than 5,000 have reported negative effects. That's less than .1%. I'll repeat that again. POINT ONE PERCENT. Out of those 4,500 people, 75% were for minor EXPECTED SIDE EFFECTS.

So, out of 5 MILLION people, .075% of them had MINOR EXPECTED SIDE EFFECTS. That's POINT ZERO SEVEN FIVE PERCENT people. Out of those 5 million, .025% had more serious illnesses. POINT ZERO TWO FIVE PERCENT.

And out of those, 11 women have died.

ELEVEN WOMEN OUT OF 5 FUCKING MILLION.  That's .00022% of all Gardrasil users.

And the CDC has ruled out Gardrasil as the cause in all of them based on the preliminary data.

If you take a group of 5 million people, group them however you want, I guarantee that more than 11 of them are going to die this year.

So, let's just say, for argument's sake, that the CDC is involved in a conspiracy with Merk that includes willingly suppressing information for money or outright attempting to kill people. I'd have to say their plan is a pretty shitty one. They only got 11 out of 5 million!  As mass murder attempts, or evil genocide plots, it ranks up there as one of the dumbest. I think the guy who used a syringe to poison, what was it? cough syrup? in drug stores had a higher kill rate. Hell, that poison pet-food scandal last year was far more successful!

Now let's just say that the government agencies aren't necessarily evil and out to kill the public, but they're sloppy with their security measures and they don't like to admit when they've made a mistake. 11 out of 5,000,000! Those are way better odds than even pure chance! I have a higher chance of actually contracting HPV and dying from cervical cancer! There are risks involved in everything. I am at higher risk of dying in a car accident than by this vaccine. I am at higher risk of getting hit by lightning than this vaccine. And this vaccine could potentially save my life ... or at least help me to avoid some rather unpleasant medical proceedures.

Please, people, do the math. HPV is a serious virus, but careful regulation of your sexual practices and regular PAP smears will minimize your risk. Support of research and vaccines and things like the carrageenan lubes will lower your risk even more. I don't want to spread a panic about HPV, but even if some people do panic, all that will happen is they better regulate their sex life. Spreading panic about things like vaccinations and medicines not only hurts those who refuse to vaccinate by allowing them to get sick with life-threatening illnesses, it also puts the general population at risk. Having un-vaccinated people allows these viruses to be reintroduced to the society, where it can mutate and/or re-infect people after the vaccination has lost its potency or the immune system has aged to the point that the vaccination is only partially effective.

Your decision to not vaccinate affects MY LIFE TOO. My decision to limit my sexual partners because of my fear of HPV affects only me and my potential partners - in a good way, or at the very least, in a neutral way.

Taken from

serolynne's LJ and not hidden under a cut because it's important that everyone read it:

http://serolynne.livejournal.com/479245.html
The HPV virus doesn't just affect the woman's body by increasing the risks for cervical cancers. But studies are starting to show that HPV is causative to oral cancer's in men (and presumably women too).. from yup, you guessed it.. oral sex. And it's now as common a cause as tobacco and alcohol.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080202/ap_on_he_me/hpv_oral_cancer_4

Remember, when a woman has mild cervical dysplasia, she is very actively shedding the virus. If you give unprotected oral sex to her, you are basically bathing your mouth and throat in juices laden with HPV shedding. The mouth and throat are similar tissue types as the cervix.

I've long suspected this, and thus why I've always drastically altered my sexual practices when dealing with an active HPV infection.

( And the article in full archived here )

Please pass this on to everyone you know, particularly those who participate in multiple partnerships, and feel free to repost in any forum or journal.

Current Mood: concerned

( My no-so-regular-but-often-updated post about Central Florida sexual health options )

The topic of HPV and other STIs comes up quite often on poly forums. I usually throw my two cents in, but it's been a few months since I did my own research, so I figured I should go out there and look at what new developments there may or may not be in HPV treatment and prevention.

Rather than re-quote all the basic stuff again, I refer you to my previous entry on the subject, http://joreth.livejournal.com/21110.html, where I discuss how Carrageenan, a gel made from red algae and found in food and some sex lubes, was found to be a massively successful HPV inhibitor.

Check that out for the basic info. From here, I will assume everyone has the same minimum level of knowledge about carrageenan that I do.

New stuff I found out on this round of research (and by "research", I mean a cursory google search while avoiding doing photography editing):

~ Sometime this year there should be the results of a phase-three test of women in Africa using a vaginal gel specifically designed for HPV prevention. http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2630

~ At the time of my last posting, they had only done petri-dish type experiments and had not had the opportunity to work on lab mice. Now they have. Their findings are very promising: "the researchers next tested to see whether compounds used in vaginal products affect susceptibility to infection. They found that a widely used vaginal spermicide, nonoxynol-9 (N-9), greatly increased the rate of infection. They then tested 2 commercial carrageenan-containing lubricants and found that they blocked infection. Carrageenan prevented HPV infection in the presence of N-9 as well." http://www.nih.gov/news/research_matters/july2007/07162007hpv.htm

~ Carrageenan was most effective at acidic pH levels similar to those encountered in the vagina, the report indicates. Besides preventing the initial attachment of capsids to cells, carrageenan also blocked postbinding events.

~ A variety of consumer products containing carrageenan also successfully inhibited HPV infectivity, according to the results, although some products labeled as containing carrageenan had little effect.

~ In the new study, carrageenan blocked infection by HPV-16 and showed signs of inhibiting two cancer-causing strains that the vaccine doesn't address. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_1_172/ai_n19377485

~ If successful, one or more of the five products entering phase III clinical trials (of HIV prevention) is likely to reach the market. These five products are: BufferGel®, Carraguard®, PRO 2000®, C31G, and cellulose sulfate (2, 44). Carraguard prevents HIV, HPV, and HSV, but does not kill sperm. BufferGel kills sperm, microbes that cause HPV, HSV, chlamydia and gonorrhea, and white blood cells that contain HIV. Pro 2000 binds to HIV, gonorrhea and HSV. Ushercell acts on a "broad range of STIs and appears to have a contraceptive effect. C31G does not seem to have any anti-HPV properties. http://www.infoforhealth.org/inforeports/microbicides/microbs1.shtml (sounds like I'll want BufferGel to prove effective for HPV, because of it's combo contraceptive/STI prevention properties)

~ A Failed Candidate: CONRAD halted its trial [of cellulose sulfate (CS), also known as Ushercell] after early results suggested that CS might be contributing to an increased risk of HIV infection among women in the study. This site has the latest (as of this date) info on all the above products being tested! http://www.thebody.com/content/treat/art42458.html

Current Mood: hopeful

This is an email I just received by someone who is a trusted source of information and involved in the medical research field. Since independent research is available online, I'm passing this on:

Hi! I'm sending this on to you because I thought you might be interested. I just found out about Herpes Whitlow, which is a herpes infection in the fingers. A friend of mine has HSV-2 in his fingers and recently passed it genitally to his sexual partner through manual stimulation (they were aware of, and accepted the risk before becoming sexually active). I believe herpes infections in the fingers are relatively rare; however knowing someone who contracted it this way makes it seem like a risk at least worth considering. I'm not trying to introduce paranoia or anything, but it may be worth considering when assessing the relative safety of manual stimulation. To me it just further enforces the
importance of testing and knowing one's sexual status, as not much is really truly "safe". There's a fair amount of information online if you're interested (including pictures), though I haven't really had the chance to comb through it (just grist for the mill right now).

I'm hoping this doesn't take on the aspects of the usual hoax email forwards with "A friend of mine knows this guy who has this cousin who's dog's last owner had a neighbor and it REALLY HAPPENED TO HIM", but it's still some information I thought was important to pass on.

What makes this exciting is that this product is already available in sex lubes! Ask for it's name "Carrageenan" in the stores. Thanks to

tacitfor the information:

Seaweed extract protects against cervical cancer: Algae compound surprisingly effective at preventing cancer-causing viral infection
13.jul.06
News @ Nature
Narelle Towie

http://archives.foodsafety.ksu.edu/ffnet/2006/7-2006/ffnet_july_17.htm
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/47275.php
http://pathogens.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.ppat.0020069&ct=1

Just a tiny amount of a common food additive has been found, in lab tests, to guard against the virus linked to cervical cancer.

Scientists have discovered that carrageenan, a compound extracted from red algae and used as a thickening agent in everyday products such as toothpaste and yoghurt, is highly effective at preventing the spread of the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus (HPV). The cheap ingredient was found to be effective at a concentration 100 times lower than the best HPV inhibitor currently on the market.

"We were screening different compounds for potential HPV inhibitors in vitro, and carrageenan, which is an inexpensive, widely available product, came up as being extraordinarily potent," says Douglas Lowy, a researcher with the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

Carrageenan was already known to be an inhibitor against the AIDS-causing virus HIV, and is currently undergoing clinical trials for that.

The compound is also already used in a variety of sexual lubricants because of its gelling properties. Lowy and his colleagues, whose paper is published in the journal PLoS Pathogens1, found that some of these over-the-counter products are decidedly effective against HPV transmission in the test-tube.

Carregeenan, which is an inexpensive, widely available product, came up as being extraordinarily potent.

Douglas Lowy
National Cancer Institute, Maryland

"The exciting thing is it is already available in various lubricants," says Anne Szarewski, a clinical consultant for the Cancer Research UK Centre in London. The compound is easy to come by, and is classed as "generally regarded as safe" by the US Food and Drug Administration. "A topical microbicide may not actually be light years away from reality," says Szarewski.

But controlled clinical trials need to take place before any of the products could be recommended as HPV inhibitors, notes study leader Christopher Buck, also with the National Cancer Institute.

Carrageenan, Irish for 'moss of the rock', is produced by boiling red seaweeds found in abundance along the rocky coasts of North America and Europe.

Buck's team found that carrageenan acts like a border control, sticking to proteins on the human papilloma virus and preventing the virus from interacting with, or entering, the cells of the cervix.

It seems to have a protective effect with some other viruses too, including the cold-sore-causing herpes simplex virus (HSV), they report. But HSV has an extra protective membrane that makes it less susceptible to carrageenan; a dose a thousand times greater was needed to achieve equivalent protection against HSV as was achieved against HPV, the team says.

Another option for defeating HPV may be using a vaccine (see 'Cervical cancer vaccine comes closer to market'). But vaccines currently on their way to clinical use cost hundreds of US dollars, so are unaffordable in developing countries, where screening against cervical cancer is poor and many women die from the disease.

Double whammy

If carrageenan were added to an HIV microbicide, says head of the Indian Council of Medical Research N. K. Ganguly, it could form one of the best preventatives against sexually transmitted diseases available.
More than 5,000 women in South Africa are currently taking part in phase-three clinical trials of Carraguard, a vaginal gel containing carrageenan that has been designed to protect against HIV. These trials are due to end in 2007.

The team hopes that further trials will be designed to explicitly test the compound's effectiveness against HPV transmission. They are also working on developing a mouse model of HPV so that they can study it more closely in the lab.

References
1. Buck C. B., et al. PLoS Path. 2, e69. 0001 - 0010 (2006).

Uses

Desserts, ice cream, milk shakes, sauces — gel to increase viscosity
Beer — clarifier to remove haze-causing proteins
Pâtés and processed meat — Substitute fat to increase water retention and increase volume
Toothpaste — stabilizer to prevent constituents separating (Tom's of Maine uses this)
Fire fighting foam — thickener to cause foam to become sticky
Shampoo and cosmetic creams — thickener
Air freshener gels
Shoe polish — gel to increase viscosity
Biotechnology — gel to immobilize cells/enzymes
Carrageenan has also been used to thicken skim milk, in an attempt to emulate the consistency of whole milk. This usage did not become popular. It's used in some brands of soy milk
Diet sodas
Lambda carrageenan is used in animal models of inflammation used to test analgesics, because dilute carrageenan solution (1-2%) injected subcutaneously causes swelling and pain.
Sexual lubricant and microbicide

More about carrageenan:

http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/hycar.html - really technical stuff ... on the molecular level even
http://members.aol.com/carragel/myhomepage/product_list.htm - more stuff with carrageenan in it
http://www.a-womans-touch.com/product/148/1668/Carrageenan_Lube.html - where to buy the Carrageenan sex lube
http://www.drugstore.com/products/prod.asp?pid=154689&catid=682&trx=PLST-0-CAT&trxp1=682&trxp2=154689&trxp3=1&trxp4=0&btrx=BUY-PLST-0-CAT - another place to buy the lube

lots of articles about the studies so far:
http://pathogens.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.ppat.0020069&ct=1
http://www.nih.gov/news/research_matters/august2006/08112006hpv.htm
http://www.nih.gov/news/research_matters/july2007/07162007hpv.htm

Current Mood: hopeful

Every once in a while, I post on my various email lists information about local STD testing centers. It's time for me to get tested again, so I'm making a post here too, even though many of you are not local. As a sexually-active ethically-non-monogamous woman, I feel very strongly about STD testing, even though I have not always been diligent about testing regularly in the past. So much of what plagues us in the STD arena is preventable and treatable that it is just dumbfounding to me that we still suffer from so many of these infections and diseases. Most of those in The Squiggle (my romantic family) keep abreast of the latest information regarding STDs, like smoocherie's website http://www.smoocherie.com and I'm honored and privileged to be part of a network with such conscientious partners like smoocherie and tacit and all of their various sweeties.

I have been living in the Tampa area for the last 6+ years, so I was utilizing the Hillsborough County Clinc, which is quite reasonably-priced for all that they offer (http://24.173.147.140/std/std_main.htm). "Each client receives a thorough exam focused on spotting signs of STD infections. Testing is offered to all clients for HIV, Syphilis, Gonorrhea, and Chlamydia. Anonymous HIV testing is available if requested. Herpes tests can be done if lesions are present. Women are also tested for bacterial vaginosis, candidiasis and trichomoniasis. Testing and/or vaccination for hepatitis are provided for clients at higher risk for these infections" all for a low price of $30, which also covers treatment of any STDs found. For an additional $30, a full PAP/Annual Gynecological Exam can also be done. The down side is that it's on a first-come first-served basis with no appointments. If you're not there by about 10 AM, you probably won't get seen. They do, however, keep your records on file for quite a long time and automatically provide a copy of all the results for you to take home, which I show to my potential partners before breaking HPV barriers for the first time.

I just moved to Orlando a couple weeks ago, and I didn't want to have to drive all the way to Tampa, especially for such an early check-in time, so I started researching local clinics. I found the Orange County Health Department has a comparable program to Hillsborough County, although their website is not as informative (http://www.orchd.com/STD/index.asp). When I emailed asking for clarification, this is the response I received:

We have 2 programs through the Orange County Health Department which you may access and be tested for most of the items you are requesting.

One program is our Women's Health Department. In order to access services through this department you must be able to have children (no previous tubal ligation or hysterectomy) and desire to be on a form of birth control or be pregnant.

If you are pregnant, you must go through our eligibility department and apply for medicaid.

If you would like a method of birth control, you may either go through eligibility or be classified as "full pay". The charge for this would be approximately $70 and would include the following:

Complete physical exam

Thin prep pap smear with HPV DNA if indicated (denotes Human Papilloma infection)

Clinical breast exam (no mammogram)

Vaginal test for gonorrhea, chlamydia, bacterial vaginosis and any other vaginal infections present

Visual exam for Herpes and genital warts

Pelvic exam to determine evidence of Pelvic Inflammatory Disease

Blood testing would include the following:

Syphilis

HIV (confidential)

Hepatitis B

The following would not be performed at either of our clinicis unless there was evidence of current infection:

Chancroid

Hepatitis A

Nongonococcal urethitis (primarily seen in men)

You may access our Sexually Transmitted Disease clinic and have all of the above tests performed except the complete physical exam. The charge for this would be approximately $45.

Pat Nolen

Women's Health Program Manager

Orange County Health Department

Orlando, Florida

407-836-2605 or 407-249-6232 ext 234

I included Pat Nolan's information because (s)he was so complete in the information I requested that I would like to pass along the name to anyone else who can't find what they're looking for on the website.

I was not nearly as impressed with Planned Parenthood, although I remember the one in California in the '90s being reasonable. Each PP office pretty much runs itself, so there is no nationwide standardization for how things are done or how much it costs, or so they tell me. More and more, I am finding PP clinics that do not accept donations (as I remembered them doing as a teenager) but charging nearly as much as a private physician. Orlando's PP website is http://www.ppgo.org/. I was unable to find any concrete information on their cost, but I seem to remember hearing that it was over $100. If I find out otherwise, I'll change this post. PP does, however, have a comprehensive page on HPV that I would like to pass along: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/news-articles-press/politics-policy-issues/medical-sexual-health/HPV-6359.htm

I think I will try the Women's Health program at the Orange County clinic and say I want the pill, although I have no intention of taking it, since it's only $10 more than I was planning to spend at Hillsborough and I'm way overdue for a physical and gyn exam. Who knows, maybe I'll qualify for the cheaper rate? Otherwise, $45 isn't bad for all the same stuff minus a physical, which is really just for my peace of mind anyway and not really STD related, and which apparently *still* covers the PAP and breast exam, for which Hillsborough clinic lacks in their STD program.

I recommend utilizing the county services as long as they provide the services required so that the government will continue to fund these clinics for low-income people to take advantage of, and to pass the word along and encourage as many people as possible to get regular testing. These STDs should not be as big of a problem in this day and age as they are, and really all it takes is a little education and some responsible maintenance.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061105/wl_africa_afp/safricahealthcondom_061105113306

"A South African inventor claims to have found a solution to a common romantic moodspoiler -- putting on a male condom ... The wrapper is simply snapped open in the middle, and the two sides gripped to roll the condom directly over the penis, pulled off and discarded."

Being one of those who loses the mood with the break for a condom (and having way too many guys not spend the time to bring me back), this sounds like a wonderful idea to me! The more practical bonus, however, is that it also reduces the STD risk, which occurs when someone starts to put the condom on the wrong way, then takes it off and puts it on the right way, which sort of defeats the STD prevention purpose of the whole thing.

Current Mood: hopeful

So, I am such a huge nerd that, while updating my sexual history sheet, I decided to create a graphical representation of my sexual history. It's not as detailed as I'd like, but I haven't decided how many more details I should represent. So far, it's a bar graph/timeline that shows everyone in my history in chronological order and color-coordinated based on 4 categories: 1) casual/fuckbuddies/one-night-stands that do not include intercourse, 2) relationships that do not include intercourse, 3) casual/fuckbuddies/one-night-stands that do include intercourse and 4) relationships that include intercourse. I thought about coding for specific activities (since they are included on the list), but the color coding or other forms of grouping would be complicated because of the large number of combinations of activities, if not number of activities themselves. The timeline is broken up by my age in years, so it's hard to tell some of the chronology because some years I had several partners in one year, but they weren't all concurrent. Problem is I'm so fuzzy on time, that I'm not sure how to clarify that because I can barely remember the year, let alone the month or date! So I still have some work to do, but it's a good start.

But yeah, I'm a dork.

Current Mood: nerdy

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