Every profession seems to have its own tailor-made occupational hazard. Veterinarians suffer bites and scratches, office workers struggle with carpal tunnel syndrome, anxiety torments professional graduate students and so on. A few years ago, I was stunned to hear that butchers, fish-mongers and those intimately involved in the meat-handling trade (please don’t read into that any more than is necessary) are more likely to be infected with a certain strain of Human Papillomavirus (HPV). Odd, huh? And kind of gross.
The thriving 120-member HPV family is quite successful at infecting humans, with up to the 20% of a population infected with a HPV wart or verruca (1). This family is as familiar to the human body as the warming, joyful sensation of the sun on our skin. The viruses are real home-bodies, typically favoring one part of the body whether that be the feet, hands, anogenital region or what-have-you. The HPV family is roughly segmented into three infection subtypes: anogenital and/or mucosal, non-genital cutaneous, and epidermodysplasia verruciformis (EV), a rare, hereditary infection that can cause widespread squamous cell skin tumors (2). The papillomaviruses show strict species specificity; attempts at a Frankensteinian or “Heart of a Dog” type of cross-species viral infection have been, thankfully, unsuccessful (4).
HPV causes epithelial proliferations of the skin and mucous membranes, with a clinical expression resulting in anything from benign warts to invasive tumors. Warts are acquired by direct or indirect contact; infected individuals transmit the infection by living their life day-to-day, unknowingly smearing HPV particles on surfaces willy-nilly (5). And so we go about living our lives, blissfully unaware of such matters. Until now, that is.
