Looking for reassurance- Smear test results

[TweeterandtheMonkeyman]

A year ago my results came back as testing positive for HPV and I was told I would need another test in a years time. I’ve just had my most recent results back and I’m now negative for HPV and they will test again in 2024 . Soooo what if the HPV comes back in the meantime, how quickly can it cause cervical cancer ? Does it just randomly come and go? Can I avoid recurrence ? The letter didn’t really explain.
Has anyone had similar? Or any experts around?

You’d have abnormal cells that would get picked up on a smear long before you got actual cancer. It takes years.

I had abnormal cells - advanced, widespread CIN III, which is the worst grade and the last stage before actual cancer - and the consultant who dealt with them told me that they would have taken ten years to develop into cancer, if they even did so at all (and I'm fine, 13 years of clear smears down the line). If you're having another smear in 2024, you don't need to worry.

Many thanks both

Glad you are fine now @spiderlight

This is really interesting.

I can’t add much op other than to say that the same thing happened to me. Positive for hpv, then negative a year later. That was a few weeks ago but with the stress of home schooling I put it to the back of my mind.

As you can tell from my username I've had a recent smear result, mine is HPV and cin3. I've just also had a biopsy so waiting on those results. All previous smears have been fine. When I've been reading up it seems that most people have HPV at some point and it usually clears up.- like yours, it's the ones that don't that cause the cancer.

Oh gosh @Helpsmearresult, thank you for replying , I really hope everything goes ok. It’s such a weird virus - I need to read up more about it myself.
One thing I’m sure of is that my DC will be having the vaccine .