Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, which is linked to an increased risk of developing cervical cancer, is “extremely common” in sexually active adolescent women in the US, a new study shows.

Investigators closely followed 60 girls, 14-to-17-years-old, attending a primary-care clinic in Indianapolis, for an average of two years.

The overwhelming majority of the adolescent girls (95 percent) reported that they were sexually active with two sexual partners, on average. Eighty-five percent of the young women were African American, 11 percent Caucasian and 3 percent were Hispanic.

A total of 49 participants (82 percent) tested positive for HPV during the study period, Dr. Darron R. Brown and colleagues from Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis report in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

At any given time, HPV infection could be detected in 25 percent to 40 percent of this group of high-risk women was in the range of.

Specific types of HPV that are tied to a high risk of cervical cancer turned up in 39 percent of specimens, while low risk HPV types were present in 20 percent. Many of the women were infected with multiple HPV types.

Thirty-seven percent of the women had abnormal Pap smear results during the study, and these abnormalities were significantly associated with high-risk HPV infection.

Brown’s team attributes the very high cumulative rate of HPV partly to the large number of specimens obtained from each woman. “Many infections were detectable for only a few weeks and would have been missed if specimens were obtained at 4- to 6-month intervals,” they note.

This finding, they point out, is “inconsistent” with previous studies that have suggested that most HPV infections clear.

The investigators believe it’s important to find out “whether infections at a very young age are those that resurge and are detected later in life, versus acquisition of a new infection.” If infections do persist at very low levels from young adulthood, more needs to be known about factors that cause progression of HPV infection to malignancy, they conclude.

SOURCE: Journal of Infectious Diseases, January 15, 2005.