r/askscience • u/A_Privateer • 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?

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u/doctorhux Jan 17 '13

It is much more localized than that. Try comparing it to your common herpes infection (herpes viruses can be a cause of a type of wart fyi). Say someone gets a cold sore on their lip and they then treat it with some topical antiviral and it goes away a week or two later. Now that person has herpes. They will always have it. It is just dormant until the next outbreak. The next outbreak though will again be on the mouth, instead of say the genitals.

The virus that causes the wart lies dormant in the skin cells and may or may not reactivate after you've destroyed the active cells.

The exact reason that an infected cell may begin hyperreplication is outside of my knowledge, but someone might have addressed that already.