Thread by @microbeminded2

This article details an important series of experiments by researchers at Penn State showing that the HPV #virus may travel through the bloodstream to drive #infection + associated #cancers (rather than only being acquired via sexual contact and remaining only in the genitals)👇

2/2 Indeed in rabbit/mouse models the team detected #HPV in mucosal membranes like the tongue and genitals, but also in the skin/#stomach (a significant finding b/c people with cancer are sometimes found to have papillomavirus sequences in their stomach + internal organs)

3/3 Jiafen Hu on the research team states 👉 “People who are receiving #blood transfusions typically have immune systems that aren't working optimally, so their systems are more vulnerable...We might want to think about adding HPV to the list of viruses...

4/4...for which blood donations are screened, as well as researching whether the typical #viral load of HPV in human blood would be sufficient to cause infection."

5/5 IMO these findings are a reminder that we must better study how #organisms (and/or communities of organisms) identified in host mucosal surfaces may additionally traffic host tissue + blood 👉 In other words, we need an #NIH-funded circulatory/blood #microbiome project ASAP