A new study at McGill University will test the ability of a personal lubricant with a special form of carrageenan gel to prevent the transmission of human papillomavirus (HPV).
The large-scale, double-blind human trial is called CATCH, an acronym for Carrageenan-gel Against Transmission of Cervical HPV, and will involve tracking HPV infections in more than 400 female volunteers for a one-year period.
Divine 9, a carrageenan-based personal lubricant from the company Divine, was the only personal lubricant selected for the trial due to earlier laboratory studies by the National Cancer Institute that showed it to be a strong inhibitor of HPV transmission, according to the firm.
Oropharyngeal cancer is the second-most diagnosed of cancers associated with HPV, according to a reportlast year from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Approximately 26,000 new cancers attributable to HPV occur each year: 18,000 among females and 8,000 among males, including an estimated 11,500 cervical cancers and 7,400 oropharyngeal cancers, the CDC found.
