Why Some HPV Infections go Away and Others Become Cancer

HPV - AHC

HPV is one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases, and nearly all sexually active men and women get it at some point in their lives. Among the commonality, some strands of HPV can cause cancer or genital warts, but it is known to go dormant due to a high immune response or does it? A new study has shown that the body’s ability to defeat the virus may be largely due to unpredictable division patterns in the stem cells affected by HPV, rather than the person’s immune system. It is also known that most people clear the virus on their own in about one to two years with little or no symptoms. “If the mathematical model behind the findings holds up, it could point to ways of tweaking the way infected cells divide in order to make HPV infections go away faster and hence lower the risk of developing cancer, said co-author Marc Ryser of Duke University.”

Source: Why some HPV infections go away and others become cancer

The results appear online in the journal PLOS Computational Biology.

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