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The consistent use of condoms protects against human papillomavirus, a cause of warts and cervical and other female cancers, researchers reported Thursday.
In the study, which independent experts said was the most conclusive to examine the role of condoms in preventing infection with the virus, women whose male partners used condoms every time they had sexual intercourse had less than half the rate of infection than women whose partners used condoms less than 5 percent of the time. The study was conducted among students at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Although the Food and Drug Administration recently licensed a human papillomavirus vaccine that is widely expected to prevent many warts and female cancers, the findings of the study are important because the vaccination protects against just four strains of human papillomavirus.
So, the authors said, consistent condom use may protect women against other dangerous strains of the virus.
"The findings are definitive," said James Allen, president of the American Social Health Association, an organization in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, dedicated to the prevention of sexually transmitted infections. Allen said he was not involved in the study, which appeared Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Experts on infectious diseases say they believe that condoms, when properly used, are effective in preventing papillomavirus and virtually all other sexually transmitted infections.
The issue has been controversial because a number of earlier studies of condoms and human papillomavirus produced conflicting findings about the degree of protection that condoms offered women.
In 2000, four government agencies convened a panel of condom experts to determine the medical accuracy of condom labels. The panel concluded that there was inadequate information about condom use in reducing the risk of all sexually transmitted infections except for the AIDS virus and, among men, gonorrhea, an editorial accompanying the journal article said.
Although the panel emphasized that the lack of information did not mean that condoms were ineffective for those purposes, the Food and Drug Administration was urged to add warnings to condom labels about the lack of protection against papillomavirus.
In the study, the researchers followed 82 female students at the University of Washington ages 18 through 22.
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