Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Causes
By Mayo Clinic staffLike warts that appear on other areas of your skin, genital warts are caused by a virus — HPV — that infects the top layers of your skin. There are more than 100 different types of HPV, but only a few can cause genital warts. These strains of the virus are highly contagious and spread through sexual contact with an infected person.
About two-thirds of people who have sexual contact with someone who has genital warts develop the condition — usually within three months of contact, but in some cases not for years.
- Human papillomavirus and genital warts. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseasese. http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/stdhpv.htm. Accessed Jan. 13, 2009.
- HPV and genital warts. National Women's Health Information Center. http://www.4woman.gov/faq/stdhpv.pdf. Accessed Jan. 13, 2009.
- Carusi DA, et al. Patient information: Condyloma (genital warts) in Women. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Jan. 13, 2009.
- Diaz ML. Human papilloma virus - prevention and treatment. Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinics. 2007;35:199.
- HPV vaccine information for young women. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/std/Hpv/STDFact-HPV-vaccine.htm. Accessed Jan. 13, 2009.
- Steckelberg JM (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. Jan. 26, 2009.
- Litin SC (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. Jan. 23, 2009.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Recommended immunization schedule for persons aged 0 to 18 years - United States. MMWR. 2010;58:1. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5851a6.htm. Accessed Jan. 8, 2010.
