There is no FDA-approved test to determine whether a man has HPV, and no routine screening is recommended for men in the general population. Unlike cervical screening for women, which uses well-established HPV DNA tests, no equivalent exists for men. The CDC states plainly: “There is no test to find out a person’s HPV status.” That said, HPV in men isn’t completely invisible. Depending on the situation, there are ways to detect the virus when it causes visible changes or when a man falls into a higher-risk category.
Why There’s No Standard HPV Test for Men
The HPV tests used in cervical screening work by detecting viral DNA in cells swabbed from the cervix. These tests are only FDA-cleared for cervical specimens. The biology of the cervix, where cells undergo a specific transformation that makes them vulnerable to HPV-driven changes, lends itself to reliable sampling. Male genital skin doesn’t behave the same way, and swabbing the penis or scrotum produces inconsistent results that aren’t clinically useful for guiding treatment decisions.
Researchers have explored swabbing the mouth, throat, and anal canal in men, but the results highlight the same core problem: a positive HPV result in these areas doesn’t tell a doctor what to do next. Among men who have sex with men, for instance, anal HPV infection is so common that a positive test doesn’t meaningfully distinguish who will develop cancer from who won’t. Without a clear path from test result to action, routine testing creates more confusion than clarity.
What Doctors Can Diagnose: Genital Warts
When HPV causes visible symptoms in men, those symptoms are almost always genital warts. A doctor diagnoses genital warts through a visual exam. No lab test is needed in most cases. The appearance of the warts, their texture, and their location are usually enough.
If warts look unusual (pigmented, bleeding, ulcerated, or fixed to deeper tissue), a biopsy may be taken to rule out precancerous or cancerous changes. Biopsy is also more likely if a man is immunocompromised, if lesions don’t respond to treatment, or if the condition worsens during therapy. Notably, HPV DNA testing is not recommended even when warts are present, because identifying the specific HPV type doesn’t change how warts are treated.
The Acetic Acid Test
Sometimes flat HPV lesions on the penis or surrounding skin aren’t visible to the naked eye. In suspicious cases, a doctor may apply a gauze pad soaked in diluted acetic acid (essentially white vinegar) to the skin for five to ten minutes. Abnormal tissue turns white, making flat warts easier to spot. This technique isn’t used for routine screening because it produces false positives. Conditions like yeast infections, psoriasis, and even healing skin can also turn white.
Anal Screening for Higher-Risk Men
While there’s no general HPV test for men, anal cancer screening does exist for specific populations at elevated risk. About 23,000 HPV-linked cancers occur in men each year in the United States, and anal cancer is one of the most preventable among them when precancerous changes are caught early.
Guidelines from the American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology recommend anal cancer screening for the following groups:
- Men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women with HIV: screening starting at age 35
- Men who have sex with women and have HIV: screening starting at age 45
- MSM and transgender women without HIV: screening starting at age 45
Screening involves a digital rectal exam at every visit, along with lab-based testing. Anal cytology (similar to a cervical Pap smear, but using a swab of the anal canal) is the primary tool. Some protocols add high-risk HPV co-testing alongside cytology. If results come back abnormal, the next step is high-resolution anoscopy, a procedure where a specialist examines the anal lining under magnification and can biopsy suspicious areas.
For men who don’t fall into these risk categories, routine anal screening isn’t currently recommended.
Throat and Oral HPV Detection
HPV-related throat cancer (oropharyngeal cancer) is now the most common HPV-linked cancer in men, and it’s natural to wonder whether a simple mouth rinse or swab could catch it early. Researchers have tested both oral brushes and mouthwash-based sampling to detect HPV DNA in saliva and throat cells. The results are discouraging for screening purposes.
In one study of patients with confirmed HPV-positive throat cancers, both methods detected the virus reliably only when the tumor was large enough to be visible during an exam. Half of the cases with small, non-visible tumors were missed entirely. Because of this limitation, oral HPV testing is not recommended for screening or early diagnosis. Most HPV-related throat cancers are discovered when a person develops symptoms like persistent sore throat, difficulty swallowing, or a lump in the neck, and then undergoes imaging and biopsy.
Urine and Semen Testing
Urine-based HPV detection is appealing because it’s completely non-invasive. A 2025 study comparing urine and semen samples from 106 men at a fertility clinic found that urine detected HPV in only 9.4% of participants, compared to 15% in semen. When semen results were used as the reference standard, urine testing had a sensitivity of just 37.5%, meaning it missed nearly two-thirds of infections. The study concluded that while urine sampling is convenient, its limited sensitivity makes it unreliable for detecting HPV in men without symptoms.
Semen testing showed higher detection rates but remains a research tool, not a clinical one. Neither method is available as a standard screening option.
What You Can Do Instead
Since testing options are limited, prevention carries extra weight for men. The HPV vaccine is routinely recommended at age 11 or 12 and is available for anyone through age 26. Adults between 27 and 45 can still get vaccinated after discussing it with a healthcare provider, though the benefit is smaller for people who have already been exposed to the virus through sexual activity.
Self-awareness matters too. Checking for new or unusual growths on the genitals, around the anus, or in the groin is the most accessible form of early detection. For throat-related concerns, paying attention to a sore throat that won’t resolve, ear pain on one side, or a neck lump that persists for more than two weeks gives you reason to seek evaluation. HPV itself may be invisible to current testing in men, but the problems it causes rarely stay hidden forever.