RESEARCH ARTICLE
Evidence and Impact of Human Papillomavirus Latency
Patti E Gravitt*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2012Volume: 6
Issue: Suppl 2
First Page: 198
Last Page: 203
Publisher Id: TOVJ-6-198
DOI: 10.2174/1874357901206010198
Article History:
Received Date: 12/6/2012Revision Received Date: 13/9/2012
Acceptance Date: 17/9/2012
Electronic publication date: 28/12/2012
Collection year: 2012
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http: //creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
At present, there is no consensus in the scientific community regarding the ability for human papillomavirus (HPV) infections to establish latency. Based on animal studies, a model of papillomavirus latency has been proposed in which papillomaviruses can be retained in the basal epithelial stem cell pool as latent infections and periodically induced to reactivate when the stem cell divides and one daughter cell is committed to terminal differentiation and induction of the viral life cycle. Tissue resident memory T-cells are hypothesized to control these periodic reactivation episodes and thus limit their duration. In this paper, evidence from human studies consistent with this model of papillomavirus latency is reviewed. Given the strong circumstantial evidence supporting a natural history of HPV infection which includes a immunologically controlled latent state, the longer term implications of HPV latency on a highly infected and aging population may warrant a more serious evaluation.