TUESDAY, July 3 (HealthDay News) -- The commonly used vaginal spermicide, nonoxynol-9, may facilitate human papillomavirus (HPV) infection while vaginal lubricants containing the polysaccharide carrageenan may help prevent infection, according to the results of a study in mice published in the July issue of Nature Medicine.
John Schiller, Ph.D., from the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., and colleagues used a mouse model of vaginal HPV infection to measure infection rates of an HPV pseudovirus after treatment with nonoxynol-9 or with Conceptrol, an over-the-counter spermicide containing nonoxynol-9.
The investigators found that mice pretreated with Conceptrol or nonoxynol-9 had much higher rates of infection with pseudovirus, measured by fluorescence microscopy, compared with control mice. In contrast, mice treated with Conceptrol and carrageenan, a polysaccharide used in over-the-counter vaginal lubricants, showed lower rates of infection suggesting that carrageenan plays a protective role even in the presence of nonoxynol-9.
"Overall, these results raised the possibility that use of over-the-counter nonoxynol-9-containing vaginal contraceptives is a risk factor for genital HPV infection in women," the authors write. In contrast, carrageenan could be used as a protective additive in over-the-counter vaginal contraceptives or even as an adjunct to current prophylactic HPV vaccines, they add.
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