Misconception #9: I had a normal pap, so that means I don't have HPV.

Not necessarily. A pap smear and the HPV test are two different things. The HPV test is run from the same sample that a pap is, but it's a separate test. The pap smear itself isn't looking for the HPV virus, it's looking for cancer, cell abnormalities, and infections - in other words, it's looking for symptoms - not just of HPV, but of all kinds of problems.

It's entirely possible to have a normal pap (no symptoms in the visible/tested area) and still have HPV. Having a normal pap just means that those particular sample cells looked normal when viewed microscopically. It's also important to remember, a pap won't indicate cancer in , say, your mouth - or anywhere else HPV causes problems - because it's only testing one area of your body. See Part 1, Misconception #1 for a breakdown of where else HPV can affect your body.

On the flip side: having an abnormal pap doesn't always mean you do have HPV, either, which shows why it's important to get tested and to follow up to find out for sure what's going on. Up to 10% of paps showing abnormalities are false positives. Check out this excerpt from an article entitled "Should We Abandon Pap Smear Testing?" by Dr. Richard DeMay:

"At the individual level, if a healthy woman were screened every 3 years from age 18 through her mid-70s, for a total of 20 Pap smears, and the false-positive rate were 5%, there is an almost 2 in 3 chance (64.2%) that she would experience at least 1 false-positive result.4,6 (If screened every year, for a total of 60 Pap smears, there is approximately a 95% chance of at least 1 false-positive result.)"

Hormonal and bacterial changes, yeast infections, recent sexual activity, and other harmless things can cause a pap to be abnormal as well.

This is Post #9 in the series, Debunking HPV Myths. For other parts of the series, click here.