College students are inundated with warnings about HIV and chlamydia, but one common and potentially life-threatening sexually transmitted disease (STD) goes largely unnoticed.

Human papillomavirus (HPV), more commonly referred to as genital warts, is one of the most widespread STDs and can also lead to cervical cancer. What many Harvard students may not know is that HPV cannot always be prevented with the use of condoms.

HPV at Large

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In several studies conducted with college women, nearly half tested positive for HPV. It is estimated that 10 million American women have active viral infections and perhaps 10 percent of them have diseased tissue as a result. Papilloma is associated with 95 percent of cervical cancer cases.

Cervical cancer kills 5,000 American women a year, and in countries where women do not have easy access to Pap smear tests, papillomavirus-related cervical cancer is the number one cause of cancer-related death.

Of the more than 50 different strains of HPV, some only cause warts, but others have been conclusively linked to pre-malignant and malignant growths in the cervix.

Two genes in the virus, E6 and E7, attach to proteins that regulate cell division and deactivate them. HPV causes the cells to grow wildly and also destroys the mechanisms that would normally fix the problem.

The first noticeable cellular difference in the cervix is subtle change in the shape of cells as they begin to enlarge. Later, the standard arrangement of cells gets destroyed as diseased cells begin to grow out of control.