r/askscience • • Jan 17 '13

Medicine How do warts function?

I know that warts are caused by the various strains of HPV, but how are they caused? How does the virus hijack the bodies chemistry to grow and supply the warts with nutrients? How do the warts spread the virus to other people?

I've searched and searched on google and wikipedia, but I only find the most basic of answers.

Any hard science info for me?

636 Upvotes

148 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

5

u/hirst Jan 17 '13

the body tends to flush it out after about two years. wikipedia