(LIVE SCIENCE) Alina Bradford, June 19, 2017 — Human papillomavirus (HPV) infections are the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Nearly 80 million people, around one in four, are currently infected with HPV in the United States, and 14 million new people become infected each year.
Most sexually active men and women will be infected at some point in their lives, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). A 2017 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Oncology found that nearly half of American men under the age of 60 have an HPV infection.
There are more than 100 varieties of human papillomavirus, and many types do not cause problems. Low-risk varieties usually clear up without any intervention, and 90 percent clear up within two years. However, at least 13 types of HPV are high-risk, according to the WHO, and these infections can persist and progress to cancer. Researchers from the CDC that found 23 percent of the participants in their study, published in early 2017, were infected with a high-risk strain of genital HPV.