HPV

Does HPV ever actually go away?

Told I have high risk HPV but normal cells, and I’ve been put on more frequent screening. Nobody could tell me whether it will clear or whether I’ll have it forever, which is the only thing I wanted to know.

paper_lantern 3 months ago

NoteMember experience, not medical advice. Symptoms overlap between infections and only a test can tell them apart.

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riverbank9 3 months ago

In most people the immune system clears it, often within a couple of years, and the follow up screening you’ve been put on is how they find out whether yours has.

The reason nobody gave you a straight answer is that there isn’t one to give in advance. It’s genuinely not known for an individual until it’s watched over time. That’s frustrating but it’s honest.

tinbird 3 months ago

Mine was gone at the next screen. A friend’s took longer. Same starting letter, different timelines, both fine.

The frequent screening isn’t a bad sign, it’s the safety net working.

two_sugars 3 months ago

There are numbers, even if nobody can tell you which side of them you will land on.

Roughly 70 per cent of infections clear within a year and around 90 per cent within two, with new infections lasting around eight months on average. Persistence, meaning it is still there over repeated tests, happens in something like one in ten.

So the honest framing is: most likely gone inside two years, and the follow up screening is how you find out rather than a sign anything is wrong.

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