How Do HPV Cells Replicate?
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What is HPV?
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HPV is a sexually transmitted infection. It is medically also known as genital human papillomarvirus. It infects the skin and mucous membranes of the body. There are numerous variations of genital human papillomarvirus and they infect the skin of the genitals and even the anal region. The penis, vagina, rectum and cervix can all be infected by HPV. HPV can lead to warts and also lesions of the genitals and the mouth and lungs.
How Do HPV Cells Replicate?
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HPV cells do not replicate on their own. Being a virus, HPV cells spread throughout the body by invading healthy cells. Typical cells have cell walls, a nucleus and cytoplasm. Cell walls provide structure to the cell, cytoplasm is the liquid environment within the cell for its metabolism and the nucleus is the center with DNA strands stored for cellular mitosis. Mitosis is when one cell splits into two identical cells. Virus cells only have a storage of their genetic material but do not have the additional features for mitosis. Viral cells must reproduce and spread by attack and conversion.
Once healthy cells are invaded, their functions are overtaken by the HPV genetic coding. The cellular functions change from whatever their previous assignments were to creating other virus cells. The once healthy cells are converted to viral cells. The new virus cells then spread and invade healthy cells and continue the process, spreading the HPV.
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Treatment of HPV
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There is no cure for HPV. In some cases, where the virus is only creating warts on the hands or feet, the body's immune system is able to kill the virus off. HPV is treated via medication and procedures to remove the warts the virus causes. Medications, such as Podofilox and Imiquimod, are used to remove warts and fight the virus. Warts can be frozen off or burned off with acid treatments. In some cases, surgery is required to remove the warts from the genitals. Lesions are removed via surgery with electrical or laser application.
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