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Posted on: 07/30/2007
Question
My girlfriend and I are a lesbian couple and we have been together for a year in the course of which I developed warts on my fingers. Can she contract genital warts from me? Currently she does not exhibit any signs. Both of us were tested for STDs last year and we both came negative. Prior to our relationship she has had many male partners often engaging in unprotected sex. Could she have been the virus carrier and just had a stronger immune system than me?
Answer
Hand warts are a different type of HPV (human papillomavirus) than genital warts. In general, it is thought that we do not transmit hand warts to genital areas, and vice versa. These different types of viruses have different preferences for tissue type, or location, in the body. Hand warts transmit to hands, foot warts to feet, and gential warts to anogenital areas (and rarely to the mouth or throat). It is not likely, then, that your partner would acquire genital warts from your hands, or that your hand warts came from genital exposure.