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If You’re a Woman of a Certain Age, Beware the Risk of HPV

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19.10.2026

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Human papilloma virus, or HPV, is not only a problem of the young.

HPV can lie dormant for decades and is easy to contract anew.

Medical guidelines recommend discontinuing pap smears at age 65 if they’ve been negative for 10 years.

If you’re sexually active, you may want to reconsider that recommendation.

Baby Boomers came of age during the Sexual Revolution and learned something both older and younger American cohorts missed: how not to use a condom. Between the invention of the birth control pill in 1960 and the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, many then-young and now-older adults “learned” to have sex without condoms or fear of pregnancy.

Now, a recent study in BMJ Global Oncology found that women aged 65 and over had the most rapidly rising rates of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) of any age cohort—and HPV causes more than 90 percent of cervical cancers.

Current pap smear guidelines recommend stopping pap smears altogether in women........

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