The Effectiveness of Genital Wart Treatments

Abstract

Human papillomaviruses (HPV) are a family of DNA viruses that infect the epithelium. They cause benign proliferative lesions called anogenital warts. HPV infection is common in men and women and is the most common sexually transmitted infection. HPV infection can cause cervical, penile, anal, vaginal, vulvar and oropharyngeal cancers. Genital warts adversely affect the quality of life. It may cause anxiety, guilt, anger, and loss of self-esteem and may cause anxiety about the cancer risk. For the diagnosis, generally, visual inspection is enough. Different kinds of treatments have been reported. Genital wart treatments are generally painful, prolonged, hard for the patient to apply, and unfortunately often with recurrence of the lesions seen after treatment. Although many treatment methods are used, their superiority to each other is unclear. In this review, we investigate self-application treatments, clinical-based treatments and alternative treatments.

Keywords

• anogenital warts
• condyloma acuminata
• hpv