Can HPV be treated?
Antibiotics or other currently available medicines cannot treat HPV infection. Luckily, the virus usually goes away or is suppressed by the body to a low level without causing any problems. However, if the infection persists, treatment is available only for the abnormal cells that form as a result. For example, genital warts can be treated with gels, creams, lasers or other technologies. Likewise, pre-cancerous cells on the cervix can be removed using surgical procedures such as LEEP (a technique that uses electrical energy) or laser therapy. When invasive cervical cancer already has developed, hysterectomy and chemotherapy usually are needed.
HPV cannot be treated. Doctors can remove visible genital lesions and warts caused by HPV, but are not able to kill the virus. Unlike bacterial STIs such as gonorrhoea, Chlamydia or syphilis, there are no antibiotics to cure HPV. We can boost the local immune system to control the lesions or some precancers of the anal or vulvar areas. But the lesions can always recur. The average time from acquisition of low-risk HPV, the ones causing the warts, to disappearance of these warts is 6-8 months. So most people even without treatment will have their warts clear spontaneously, some with only one treatment others still have them after 24 months of treatment. Most patients will likely prefer that a treatment be applied to the warts to have them disappear understanding that they may recur or that they may continue being contagious even without visible lesions.
