Awareness about human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and its link to cervical cancer, is relatively low among American women, according to a survey of 3,076 women 18 to 75 years of age.
Only 40 percent of women responding to the 2005 Health Information National Trends Survey had ever heard about HPV and, of those, less than 20 percent knew that HPV could sometimes lead to cervical cancer.
Sixty-four percent of women knew that HPV was sexually transmitted and 79 percent knew it could cause abnormal Pap smears.
“Therefore, one of our main findings is that being aware of HPV does not guarantee accurate knowledge,” Dr. Jasmin A. Tiro, of the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, told the American Association for Cancer Research’s Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Meeting in Boston.
Younger women, those with higher education levels, and those exposed to more health information were more likely to have heard about HPV. “But the only factors associated with having accurate knowledge — knowing that it could lead to cervical cancer — was an abnormal Pap test or testing positive on an HPV test,” Tiro said.
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