Between the commercials & decades of preventative measures available to people as young as teenagers, why isn’t general causation info more transparent?
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So some scientists think it works like this: there are special cells in the body called stem cells that can become any type they want, say a muscle or a skin cell. This is good and needed.
Some viruses can infect a stem cell and it’s not always really bad. But some viruses tell the cell to create substances that keep the stem cell and any other cells around it from dying naturally. This natural death is called apoptosis.
HPV is one of these types of viruses that tell cells to stop dying, which is called an oncovirus. What it really means is some strains or types of HPV can sometimes infect a stem cell and keep it from dying naturally and to create chemical blockers for all the cells around it to do the same. The stem cell keeps dividing and dividing and the cells don’t die and soon become cancer stem cells.
What this means is these cancer stem cells can divide endlessly and create any of the cell types in order for the tumor to continue. But cancer stem cells also make it easier for the cancer to spread to other organs in the body, too.
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