Site of infections associated with human papillomavirus

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most clinically common sexually transmitted infection due to its carcinogenic power and the high number of lesions that it causes at different sites of the human body.

Genital tract organs are the most common sites where the virus can be found, but by increasing the sensitivity of diagnostic technique, it is possible to identify viral presence in different regions of the body such as the stomach, the lung, and the urinary tract. These findings break with the traditional HPV skin/genital tropic profile and demonstrate that the virus is capable of infecting a wide variety of cells, tissues, and organs or can, at least, survive in these areas. The widespread presence of the HPV in the human body, often in latent form, led us to consider the hypothesis that HPV latency may be associated with no disease.

This observation raises further questions about the possibility of the virus not causing disease in specific sites of the human body, but rather, behaving like a commensal/opportunistic microorganism.