[Leslie Carol Botha Waiting to have a pap smear until the age of 21 is absurd - especially with the number of adolescent girls having unprotected sex.  There has been an alarming rise in STD's including AIDS amongst this age group. It almost seems that ASCP is opening the doors for more vaccines for STD's.  Girls who have had the Gardasil HPV vaccine must have a pap smear since their has been an alarming increase in cervical dysplasia and cervical cancer amongst girls who have had the vaccine. ]

To Pap or Not to Pap: What the New Cervical Cancer Screening Guidelines Mean for Women

ASCP – New Cervical Cancer Screening Guidelines Now Available at http://ajcp.ascpjournals.org/.

Chicago – The advice used to be simple, if not necessarily what women wanted to hear: A Pap smear every year. New cervical cancer screening guidelines released today are more detailed and precise, and may seem like the latest in a series of ever-changing and possibly confusing health care recommendations. The American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP) – a coauthor of the new guidelines and the association of pathologist physicians and medical laboratory professionals who interpret the Pap and human papillomavirus (HPV) test results – is cutting through the clutter to tell women what they need to know about these familiar tests.

Overall the guidelines say that cervical cancer screening can begin later, be performed less often and stop earlier than previously recommended. But there are, of course, exceptions.

“When new screening guidelines are released, it can be difficult for women to know exactly what to do, especially when there are new types of tests, as well as vaccines now available,” said Mark H. Stoler, MD, FASCP, past president of the ASCP and professor of pathology, cytology and gynecology at the University of Virginia Health System, Charlottesville. “As the experts in laboratory medicine, ASCP is here to help clinicians and women make sense of the new screening recommendations.”

“The guidelines strike a balance between the benefits of the life-saving screening tests and the harms of over-testing, which can include unnecessary invasive procedures and worry,” Dr. Stoler said.

Following is what women need to know about the new guidelines and recommendations for cervical cancer screening:

• Not until age 21: Women shouldn’t get a Pap test until they’re 21 years old, even if they’ve been sexually active.
• Every three years: Women should have a Pap test once every three years from ages 21 to 29.
• After age 30: After 30, women should have a Pap test combined with testing for HPV every five years. HPV is a virus that can cause cervical cancer. An acceptable alternative is to continue having a Pap test alone every three years.
• Over age 65: Women over 65 should stop getting cervical cancer screening tests altogether, as long as they’ve had at least three consecutive normal Pap tests or two negative HPV tests in the previous 10 years (the most recent in the previous five years), unless they have a history of pre-cancer. In that case, women should continue routine screening for 20 years.
• HPV vaccination isn’t a factor: Whether or not a woman has had the HPV vaccine, she should continue to follow the above recommendations because the vaccine does not protect against all HPV strains that can cause cervical cancer.
• After hysterectomy: If a woman has had a hysterectomy and the cervix was removed, she should not be screened at all, as long as there is no history of pre-cancer.

None of these screening recommendations applies if a woman has a history of cervical cancer, was exposed to the synthetic hormone DES when in the womb, or if her immune system is suppressed due to HIV or other conditions or medications.

Read More…

Read the complete article and related information at To Pap or Not to Pap? That is the Question.

Read the complete article and related information at One Less to Get the HPV Vaccines – Gardasil and Cervarix

Female condoms are a good bargain when it comes to preventing HIV infections. Excuse me, women are not ‘bargain shopping’ when it comes to HIV prevention.  I would rather know that the more expensive condoms worked. HIV prevention is ‘priceless.’

A bus in Washington, D.C., displays an advertisement for a female condom in July 2010. To encourage their use, community groups distributed more than 500,000 of the female condoms, flexible pouches that are wider than a male condom but similar in length, during instruction sessions at beauty salons, barber shops, churches and restaurants.

Study Finds Female Condoms Are Cost-Effective For HIV Prevention

NPR

Read the complete article and related information at Female Condoms Cost-Effective For HIV Prevention- do they work?

Say what? HIV AIDS prevalence is highest in the U.S. teen demographic… Big Pharma covering – or in this case – protecting their asses/assets again at women’s expense.  A little further research shows a report in Infectious Disease News that states the obvious -‘Use of injectable contraceptives increased risk for HIV acquisition.’

One must wonder whether MedPage Today has sold out to Pharma.

Contraceptive Use Carries No Bigger HIV Risk

MedPage Today

By Ed Susman, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today
Published: March 09, 2012
Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

SEATTLE — Women who use oral contraceptives do not appear to have any increased risk of acquiring HIV, researchers said here.

In a retrospective study, combined oral contraceptive use was associated with a non-significant 12% reduction in the risk of HIV infection (P=0.54) and women who used progestin oral contraceptives had a 2% increased risk of HIV infection (P=0.94), Sandra McCoy, MPH, PhD, an adjunct epidemiologist at the University of California, Berkeley, reported.

But, depending on the types of statistical analyses employed, there was a 37% increased risk of HIV acquisition with injected hormonal contraceptives, McCoy told MedPage Today during the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.

Even if that risk is real, McCoy suggested that the benefits of contraception would likely outweigh the risk. “There are numerous benefits to effective and reliable hormonal contraception,” she said. “There are significant social, economic, and health benefits, such as reductions in unwanted pregnancy, maternal morbidity and mortality, and infant mortality.”

“All of our results need to be placed in context with the availability of effective and reliable contraception. It is very possible that even if there were an increased risk with injectable contraception, it might not be big enough to outweigh all of the amazing benefits of contraception,” she said.

Her study grew from reports at the International AIDS Society which suggested an increased risk of HIV with contraceptive use. McCoy recognized that research work already performed by her group might hold answers to the controversy.

“We conducted a secondary data analysis of an HIV prevention trial conducted among women in South Africa and Zimbabwe,” she explained. “This question is of great importance because 140 million women worldwide use hormonal contraception. Overall, we had 4,866 women in the study and we observed 274 seroconversions, an incidence rate of 4.1 per 100 women-years.”

Read Full Article…

Read the complete article and related information at MedPage Today Says Days of Free Sex are Back – Spins Study in Infectious Disease News

LA Weekly

We’re spending billions to develop an HIV vaccine. Why not also focus on building a better condom?

By Paul R. Abramson and L.J. Williamson
Thursday, Feb 9 2012

Imagine you’re trying to hook up with a date, and he whips out a circa-1999 cellphone. Date over.

Now imagine the evening is going well — really well — and your companion whips out a circa-1799 condom. Date normal.

Condoms, the medical contemporaries of bloodletting and leeches, have not been significantly improved since the 1800s, when rubber first replaced the then-standard animal intestines, which were an upgrade from leather.

We can do better, people.

Condoms suck. Having to put a tight, sensation-stealing plastic trash bag over your johnson during sex sucks. And yes, sexually transmitted infections suck, too, but not badly enough, apparently, even with the threat of serious illness and death, to get everyone to use condoms every time. Admit it: You don’t use a condom every time.

Even doctors don’t use condoms every time. A conversation with a USC professor of medicine provoked a hush-hush confession that at least a dozen fellow physicians suffered from sexually transmitted infections — HIV, genital herpes, the gamut. Such infections may be more common in less educated populations, but they’re far from nonexistent in academia. If doctors, who have seen firsthand the ravages of such infections, can’t reliably use condoms, what hope is there for the rest of humanity?

It’s easy to blame the risk takers among us, to dismiss them as impulsive, impoverished and uneducated, but condoms suck whether or not you’ve got an advanced degree. It’s time to look for another place to put the blame.

And it’s not with the manufacturers. Condoms are a high-volume, low-cost product, so the businesses that produce them, understandably, put money into distribution, not innovation. They might tinker with shapes, adding “pleasure ribs” or even minivibrators, but game-changing innovation takes a wad of cash that condom makers just don’t have.

Take Carter-Wallace, the New York–based company that owned the premier condom brand Trojan for decades. When Carter-Wallace sold its consumer division in 2001, it was worth just $739 million — and that included not just Trojan but also Arrid deodorant and other brands.

Contrast that with the number of Benjamins we’ve thrown at developing an HIV prevention vaccine: $682 million in 2004 alone, according to a 2005 study funded in part by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. A huge chunk of that funding — 88 percent — came from the public sector, with the United States kicking in $2.5 billion from 2000 to 2005. Wealthy donors also have been motivated to help: Bill Gates alone has contributed $4.5 billion to vaccines. None of that money went to condom tech.

Yet, although we’ve been chasing an HIV-prevention vaccine since 1984, we’ve still got nothing to show for it. Imagine how far those same hundreds of millions could go toward the development of a better-feeling condom — a condom people would actually wear.

After all, there is one area in which condoms don’t suck: They prevent sexually transmitted infections. To date, we haven’t even found a vaccine to prevent one of the many strains of HIV. Even if an omnipotent AIDS vaccine were developed, it would still leave untouched syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia and every other sexually transmitted infection. Compare that to the simplicity of the one-size-fits-all-diseases barrier method: the simple condom.

Chasing a vaccine has so far been a losing game. But a great-feeling condom could be an epic win.

Here’s the dirty little secret of condoms: They actually were meant to suck. In 1877, a medical study of syphilis prevention described condoms as “the least bad system, and so much the better if a condom is more likely to inspire disgust than provoke desire. The number of couplings, and consequently of cases of [infection], will thereby be reduced.” In other words, if condoms suck badly enough, maybe people will get so turned off that they won’t have sex anymore.

Read Full Article…

Read the complete article and related information at Condoms Suck – Time to Stop Having Sex or Re-Invent the Condom?

Is this new ad campaign bringing awareness – by shaming women? Why do these issues always focus on women? Where is male accountability?

RTD Bus Ad: ‘I Have Riff-Raff In My Hoo Hoo’

Ad Campaign Bringing Awareness To Unintended Pregnancies, Birth Control, STDs - 

Channel 7 News – Denver, CO
Marshall Zelinger, 7NEWS Content Producer/Presenter
February 15, 2012

DENVER — A new ad campaign is getting attention across the metro area, especially with one saying on the side of an RTD bus: “I Have Riff Raff In My Hoo Hoo.”"What is, ‘I have riff-raff in my hoo hoo?’” asked 7NEWS reporter Marshall Zelinger.”It’s slang that is very — it resonates with the target group,” said Ellen Marshall, one of the masterminds behind Colorado Initiative to Reduce Unintended Pregnancy and beforeplay.org.

Read the complete article and related information at ‘I Have Riff-Raff In My Hoo Hoo’

Staying Healthy in a Challenging World

Cathie Lippman, M.D.

Posted on January 27, 2012

The LA Times this morning reports on a new study showing than about 7% of American teens and adults carry the human papillomavirus in their mouths and this is a probable cause for much of the increase in mouth and throat cancer over the past 25 years.  Where does the HPV in the mouth come from?  From oral sex.  And people believe oral sex is safer than intercourse.  There seemed to be a correlation between the rate of infection and the frequency of oral sex.

Why are some people more affected than others?  As one researcher noted, perhaps the incidence in older people is because their immune systems are weaker.  What were the recommendations?  Education is one and that makes sense.  Inform people that they need to use “protection” for oral sex just as they do for intercourse.  It is possible that the HPV vaccines would be helpful, for boys and for girls, even though we don’t know if they will work for oral cancers.

To this I say “Wait a minute!”  Please understand that I am sympathetic to anyone who is experiencing an illness, including cancer.  My idea of prevention, however, is NOT vaccination.  Vaccines are not without their side effects.  I assume, people being who we are, that oral sex has been around just about as long as humans have existed.  Why now are we seeing more oral cancer?  Why now have we identified more virulent strains of HPV?

Instead of using the FEAR argument: “if you don’t take this vaccine, you are more likely to get cancer,”  how about approaching this from the “love” argument?  I don’t mean more sex.  Sex is not the same as love.  Here I mean love for one’s body.  I mean respect for the intelligence of our body.  We don’t expect our car to last many years without properly caring for them.  The same goes for our body.  People, especially young people, nowadays are not as healthy as previous generations for several reasons.  The food we are eating is not as nourishing, our diets are lousy, we are assaulted by a multitude of new chemicals and toxins humans never had to deal with before, and we don’t get enough sleep.

Read Full Article…

Read the complete article and related information at HPV and oral cancers: the explanation?

Gardasil – the new sexually morality? LB

MedPage Today

By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today
Published: January 04, 2012
Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco.

Most girls who receive the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine don’t take it as a license for riskier sexual behavior, researchers reported.

In baseline data from a longitudinal study, participants perceived themselves at lower risk for HPV infection after getting the vaccine, according to Tanya Kowalczyk Mullins, MD, of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, and colleagues.

But most still said they needed to practice safer sex, Mullins and colleagues reported in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

On the other hand, those who saw less of a continued need for safer sex were more likely to have a lower level of knowledge about HPV and the vaccine itself, the researchers reported.

The findings come from a survey taken after the first HPV shot for 339 female participants, ages 13 to 21, in a continuing longitudinal cohort. Some 235 mothers and female guardians were also surveyed.

The girls averaged 16.8 years, 76.4% were black, and 57.5% were sexually active, the researchers reported.

The primary outcome measures were perceived post-vaccination risk of HPV, risk of other sexually transmitted infections, and need for safer sexual behaviors. The researchers also looked to see what factors influenced a perceived lesser need for safer sex.

On 10-point scales, with lower numbers indicating less perceived risk or less need for sexual safety, the researchers found:

• An average score of 5 on the risk-of-HPV scale
• An average of 6.1 on the scale for perceived risk of other sexually transmitted infections
• An average of 8.5 on the scale for perceived need for safer sexual behavior

Read Full Article…

Read the complete article and related information at Girls Who Get HPV Vaccine Still Value Safe Sex

MSN Health

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 4 (HealthDay News) — Nearly one in four girls who gets the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine mistakenly thinks that her risk of getting other sexually transmitted diseases is lowered, a new study indicates.

HPV is the most commonly transmitted sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the United States, with nearly 30 percent of sexually active girls aged 14 to 19 infected. Some virus types can raise the risk for genital warts and cervical cancer.

“I think it’s important to counsel [girls] about what the vaccine protects against,” said lead researcher Dr. Tanya Kowalczyk Mullins, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.

The findings were reported in the January issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

Two HPV vaccines are now licensed in the United States. One, Gardasil, protects against two HPV strains linked with genital warts and two HPV types linked with cervical cancer. Another vaccine, Cervarix, induces immunity to the two HPV types linked with cervical cancer.

The HPV vaccine is recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for boys and girls aged 11 to 12, with catch-up immunizations recommended to the age of 26 for women and 21 for men.

In the study, Mullins polled 339 girls, average age nearly 17, after their first of three HPV doses, and their mothers. Nearly 60 percent of the girls were sexually experienced.

Mullins wanted to know the girls’ perceived risk of getting HPV after the vaccination, their perceived risk of getting other STIs and their perceived need for continued safer sex behaviors.

“Most girls correctly thought the vaccine does not protect them against STIs other than HPV,” Mullins said.

Read Full Article…

Read the complete article and related information at Many Teen Girls Mistakenly Think HPV Vaccines Cut Risk for All STDs

Study funded by NIH and with research grants given by Merck?  Now what are they up to?  Birth control pills and HPV vaccines and adolescent immaturity do not mix period. Girls think they are ‘safe’ – how wrong they are…. they are being manipulated for their pelvic gold mine. ….. LB.

Reuters

Some adolescent girls who get the HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer wrongly think they no longer need to practice safe sex, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

Read the complete article and related information at Some girls overestimate HPV vaccine protection