Humans have always been intrigued by procreation, and it continues to be one of the most widely talked about issues across media – both artistic and mainstream.
Most of things in our life are learnt through discussions we have in academics, friends or relatives, etc. But when it comes to sex; it is treated as a secretive subject. So, it’s mostly a self-learned subject from half-baked knowledge from people like yourself. Of course, modern urban families are ready to speak about it and address it from an educational perspective. As far as sex education is concerned, India has a long way to go. In fact, Sex Education has chances of bringing down sexual crimes in India.
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”
- Nelson Mandela
There are many misconceptions around sexual health and diseases. There is general lack of awareness around how these diseases spread. A common pathogen, Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) doesn’t spread through body fluids, but rather transferred horizontally like fomites, fingers, and mouth, skin contact [without sex]. So be cautious with people whom you are in skin-to-skin contact often.
Today, there are many different kinds of safeguard methods available. Choosing them wisely gives us a chance to be disease free. As the good old saying goes, prevention is better than cure. There is lot of scope to create awareness around the different methods available.
So what should one do in the unfortunate case when one contracts an STD? Rather than doing traditional microbiology test for specific virus, using the ultra-fast NGS based test from ChapterDx comprehensive HPV-STI assay which can detect and identify 41 STI (28 HPVs and 13 STIs) with genotypes from the given sample can be of great help.
Common strains like Chlamydia trachomatis(CT), Neisseria gonorrhoeae(NG), Mycoplasma genitalium(MG), Trichomonas vaginalis(TV), Treponema pallidum(TP), Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) and Herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) can be screened in a go.
HPV vaccine is available for prevention. Some HPVs are strongly associated with cervical cancer. It is high time that we adopt newer methods for HPV-STI detection like Next Generation Sequencing.
Even if a person is affected by any STD, they can recover and get back to normal life. Current well-established treatment options include surgery, laser treatment, drugs like Condylox (podofilox), Trichloroacetic acid, Aldara (imiquimod) and Zyclara, etc. can be used to treat HPV patients.
Think before making moves! Act wise by not spreading the infection around!
By: Rajavarman Kittu,
Clinical Bioinformatics Specialist,
Premas Lifesciences,
New Delhi, India
