A type of HPV has been found to cause skin cancer, according to a new report

Doctors of the National Institutes of Health have discovered a new cause of skin cancer, according to a case report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The culprit is a type of human papillomavirus (HPV) which is regularly on the skin. It has been thinking for a long time that it plays a role in the development of skin cancer, but we did not think we were a direct cause.

Skin cancer is caused by DNA damage to skin cells. The most common source of these damage is the ultraviolet sun radiation. HPV can help DNA damaged by UVs accumulate in cells and become cancer. However, in the new case report, doctors have found that the virus itself could cause the training of cancerous lesions.

The discovery was made in a 34 -year -old woman with a weakened immune system; Experts said it is very unlikely that HPV can play the same role in causing skin cancer in a person with a healthy immune system.

“The virus has reproduced in a somewhat uncontrolled way and ended up integrating into skin cells and once they have done, they have become cancerous,” said Dr. Andrea Lisco, head of the mucosa and skin skin diseases at the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, part of the NIH. Lisco was the doctor of the woman and also the main author of the case report.

The woman had 43 spots of cutaneous epidermoid carcinoma – the second most common type of skin cancer, after melanoma – on her face, hands and legs. She has undergone surgery to eliminate cancers and immunotherapy, but cancer has returned. When Lisco and her team have biopted several of her new tumors, they found that women’s skin cancer was led by something they had never seen before: a group of HPV called HPV.

About 90% of people wear a hpv beta strain. Usually, the virus lives on the skin and does not integrate into the DNA of skin cells.

“We shake hands and collect these viruses, but if our immune systems are under control, we are fine,” said Lisco.

It is a different group of HPV – Alpha HPV – strains – which are linked to a range of cancers. HPV Alpha live on mucus membranes and can integrate into DNA, causing cancers of the cervix, anus, head and neck.

The woman in the case report had a genetic condition that weakened her T cells (a type of immune cell), leaving her immunocompromised. This allowed the VPH beta living on its skin to behave more like HPV alpha, integrating its DNA into its skin cells and reproducing unstruized, transforming cancer cells.

“You do not know how much you can apply a patient’s information to the wide variety of patients directly,” said Dr Anthony Oro, a dermatology professor at Stanford Medicine, who was not involved in the case.

However, “this suggests that, in the event that the arm of the T cells of the immune system does not do its job, HPV viruses of beta type could contribute to skin cancer, and perhaps other types of cancers,” he said.

The patient needed a stem cell transplant, which replaced her defective T cells with T cells that could prevent HPV from replicating.

“We had to give this patient a brand new immune system,” said Lisco. It worked. Three years after transplantation, women’s skin cancer has not returned.

“This gives us good information on how the HPV and the immune system works,” said Dr Anthony Rossi, dermatologist and surgeon Mohs at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who was not involved in the woman.

Doctors have long known that some HPV beta cause changes on the skin, such as warts on the hands and feet.

“HPV can integrate and cause changes in the cell cycle, especially in people with deleted immune systems,” said Rossi. “What was new about it is that they discovered that it was a Beta HPV who joined DNA.”

Other researchers have hypothesized that it was a possibility based on studies in mice, but the new report shows that it can occur in humans. The number of people could be at risk is still unknown.

“It is only a patient, and they have this unique situation of an immunological condition which allows the BETA HPV to reproduce without control,” said ORO.

Other biopsies of skinny skin cancer have not detected HPV, which means that not all cases are caused by viruses. Lisco said the concept of origin – that HPV passively contributes to skin epidermoid carcinoma by helping UV radiation damage skin cells, but does not actively help cancer – is always the likely explanation for many people.

For them, “UV protection would be prevention,” said Lisco – bearing sunscreen and covering your skin of the sun – adding that immunocompromised people should be watched more closely. People with weakened immune systems are up to 100 times more likely to develop epidermoid carcinoma.

The Gardasil HPV vaccine protects against nine stumps of HPV Alpha and has been more reduced by the rate of cervical and head and neck cancer. We do not know how much cross protection, if necessary, the vaccine provides against other HPV strains, including HPV beta.

“Even if this strain is not in the vaccine, there is a certain theory according to which there is a diaphony between HPV strains,” said Rossi.

Most people will get the HPV of their lives. Scientists have so far identified approximately 200 unique strains of the virus. Alpha-HPV, with its well-established links with cancer, has so far been the main research subject.

“This suggests that this other side of the family could also be important in situations where our immune system does not do its job,” said Oro.