What does a virus want? I already explained what a virus is but what is the final goal of a virus if one can even say it has a goal?
A virus wants to multiply and be transferred to another host. Being extremely deadly doesn’t help that goal but the fact that virus infections still kill thousands of people (if not millions) every day shows that the “goal” isn’t always met. Something went wrong.
In the case of cervical cancer, something goes wrong too. HPV, the human papillomavirus is the culprit for this type of cancer. Like with HIV and herpes there are, again, more than one virus strain involved but the details would be too extensive for a Steemit post (there are over 120 different ones!).
HPV usually attacks skin cells and the cells of mucous membranes. It needs the cell to constantly synthesize new DNA and proteins so that new viruses can be built. But skin cells are lazy, they’ve usually already stopped multiplying and just wait until they slowly dry up and die. The papillomavirus deactivates certain mechanisms inside the cell (for example the p53 gene which suppresses cancer growth) which kicks the host cell back into a cycle of DNA replication and cell division.
I think you can see yourself how uncontrolled growth of cells that aren’t supposed to grow anymore can be bad.
The virus does several other things that damage the cell’s normal functions which leads to mutations very easily. The usual safeguard mechanisms are turned off and cancer can form easily.
But what can be done?
Luckily, there are several things we can do to prevent cervical cancer. In some cases, the body can get rid of the infection itself (over the span of a year). For some HPV strains, there is a vaccination but it’s only effective before an infection has happened. In Australia, the number of women with genital warts (also HPV induced) has dropped to almost 0 after vaccinating them all. As a side effect, genital warts in men dropped too!
But what if there is already an infection and it doesn’t vanish by itself again? After all, cervical cancer is the third main cancer-related cause of death in women worldwide.
Luckily, this sort of cancer grows comparably slow. If it’s detected, the affected cells can just be cut out of the cervix, if they’re caught early enough. So please girls and women, go to your gynecologist checkups one to two times a year!
Source:
Lecture “Tumor – Virus – Immune System : Human Papillomavirus” by Sigrun Smola
Picture taken from pixabay.com, sketch by me
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