Science Just Revealed How Many Men Have HPV And You Won't Be Happy About It

Oh, good ol' HPV — otherwise known as human papillomavirus. The most common STD of all STDs!

A whopping 79 million Americans have HPV, and it's so easily spread, if you're sexually active human you probably have it, too (unless you've been vaccinated).

A whopping 79 million Americans have HPV.

So, my gay male and heterosexual hypochondriacs who have clicked into this article out of morbid curiosity, I come bearing scary news.

HALF of men — like, almost 50 freaking PERCENT of MEN in America — have HPV. Yup. To be exact, 45 percent of male creatures are lurking around the stratosphere with the highly contagious ~HPV~.

That's 35 million HPV-infected men, if you're like me and need exact numbers.

50 freaking PERCENT of MEN in America have HPV.

Want to know something even scarier? Of those infected, 25 percent have a "high risk" strain of HPV, which is strongly connected to cancer. Ain't life grand?

And according to the study, less than 11 percent of men have had the HPV vaccine.

Let's review these stats again in case there's any confusion, babes: Eleven percent of men have HPV, less than 50 percent of men have received the HPV vaccine and 25 percent have a high-risk strain of HPV.

25 percent of the HPV-infected men have a high-risk strain of HPV.

So basically, men are blindly walking around with HPV and giving it to their sex partners. The news even surprised doctors.

The study found that the largest demographic infected with HPV was actually older men, which is the reverse of the current HPV situation for women.

Dr. Jasmine Han, who led the study, said she found the "consistent, high infection rate among all age groups in men was very striking, because this was not expected."

She even thinks that the HPV vaccine cut-off age, which is 26, should be reevaluated due to these very alarming results.

Researchers estimated about 25 million men in America are good candidates for HPV vaccine, but they haven't had it yet.

If more men were vaccinated for HPV, it could greatly impact the rates of cervical cancer in women because fewer women would run the risk of contracting the virus.

It would also help to quell the cancer numbers in men, too, as HPV in men can cause men both genital and oral cancers.

So moral of the story: Get vaccinated, boys.

So the moral of the story: Get vaccinated, boys. It could stop you from spreading the virus, which could stop you from spreading cancer.