How HPV Can Play Out Over Your Lifetime
- By
Julia Austin
Source: Peter Dazeley / Getty
It can lay dormant for years
I’ve had one sexual partner for the last eight years. Ten years ago, I did not test positive for a high-risk strain of HPV. In the two-year gap between my doctors finding a low-risk strain, and me finding my now-husband, I had exactly two partners with whom I did not use condoms. Then, my husband. What that means is that, in all likelihood, this strain has been in me, but dormant, for at least eight years, if not ten years (up to the last time I was tested, when it was not found). Translation: get your regular pap smears because years of normal ones are no promise of anything for the long-term.
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