Go to Content Go to Navigation Go to Navigation Go to Site Search Homepage

After genital warts disappeared with treatment about 6 months ago is it okay to start being sexually active with future partners?

You can start having sex again as soon as you’re fully healed and it feels comfortable to you. 

There are a number of ways to treat genital warts: Your nurse or doctor may put chemicals on your warts to make them go away or stop growing, give you a prescription for a cream that you’ll put on the warts yourself for several weeks, freeze the warts off (cryotherapy), burn off the warts using an electric current, or remove the warts with a knife or wire and electricity (LEEP). 

Genital warts are caused by certain types of human papillomavirus (HPV). Your treatment should remove your warts and lower your chances of passing HPV to anyone else. Genital warts can be treated, but they can’t be cured. You’re removing the warts, but you’ll still have the virus that causes them. The virus may go away at some point on its own, but there’s no way to know for sure. Some people will get warts again and others won’t.

Using protection — like condoms and dental dams — when you have sex helps to lower your risk of getting any STD. And while getting the HPV vaccine won’t make your genital warts go away if you’ve already had them in the past, it can protect you from getting other types of HPV.

Note: Before you have sex, be sure to let your partner know that you have HPV, and there’s a possibility that new genital warts will show up. Genital warts are treatable and aren’t dangerous, but even if warts aren’t present you can still pass the virus. 

Tags: HPV

Explore more on

We and our third partners use cookies and other tools to collect, store, monitor, and analyze information about your interaction with our site to improve performance, analyze your use of our sites and assist in our marketing efforts. You may opt out of the use of these cookies and other tools at any time by visiting Cookie Settings. By clicking “Allow All Cookies” you consent to our collection and use of such data, and our Terms of Use. For more information, see our Privacy Notice.

Cookie Settings

We, and our third-party partners, use cookies, pixels, and other tracking technologies to collect, store, monitor, and process certain information about you when you access and use our services, read our emails, or otherwise engage with us. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences, or your device. We use that information to make the site work, analyze performance and traffic on our website, to provide a more personalized web experience, and assist in our marketing efforts. We also share information with our social media, advertising, and analytics partners. You can change your default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of required cookies when utilizing our site; this includes necessary cookies that help our site to function (such as remembering your cookie preference settings). For more information, please see our Privacy Notice.

Marketing

On

We use online advertising to promote our mission and help constituents find our services. Marketing pixels help us measure the success of our campaigns.

User Feedback and Session Replay

On

We use qualitative data from LogRocket, UserZoom, Hotjar and AB Tasty to learn about your user experience and improve our products and services. LogRocket allows us to view session replays.