Hey Guys! Wanna Prevent HPV?
The newest news out from the New England Journal of Medicine is good news for guys! Gardasil, the HPV vaccine that has been recommended for girls and young women by the Center for Disease Control, is now an option for guys as well. According to Sex, Etc… the NEJM “…just published a study funded by Merck—the maker of Gardasil—on the effectiveness of the drug in males. The study found that Gardasil was 90-percent effective at preventing genital warts and 86-percent effective at preventing persistent HPV infections. Gardasil was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for males in 2009”. If you’re young and not so sexually experienced, the HPV vaccine can be very effective, but even if you have had sex, it can still help protect you against many strains of HPV. The Message: if you are a guy under 26 years old, get the shot!
HPV is a tricky sexually transmitted disease, or STD. For the most part, there aren’t any visible symptoms, like pain with peeing or smelly discharge. A few of the strains (there are over 40 sexually transmitted versions of the virus) cause genital warts, and there are rare cases where some strains cause penile or anal cancer. Before now, there wasn’t any prevention, other than condoms and abstinence. With the Gardasil vaccine on the market for both guys and girls now, we might just have a shot at getting this way-too-common STI under control!
If you have a great idea to get other teens hooked up with the HPV DL, submit a tip to our Tip Generator on the teensource.org website! Click on the link to check it out! And follow this link for more info on men and HPV.