Sex between Humans and Neanderthals founded the most aggressive papillome

Modern human had esporadic sex with neandertals on their way out of Africa. This is how our archaic ancesters bequeath us an aggressive papillomavirus which can provoke cervix, penis, anus, or vagina tumor according to a new investigation.

This new study publish in the Molecular Biology and Evolution Magazine and carried out by a group of scientists from the Cathalan institute of Oncology and the National Centre of scientific investigations in France (CNRS), affirms that this sexual relations not only leave a few genes but also a particular sort of papillomavirus.

This patogen is really aggressive for humans due to its capacity to transform our healthy cells in tumoral ones. The senior researcher Ignacio Bravo declares “the human’s history is also the history of the virus we inherit and bear”.

Thanks to the human genome diversity proyect, the researchers track the past of this virus in order to explain its evolution, analyzing "the biggest sample studied untill now" with almost one thousand humans from more than 50 different populations.

There is a diversity of 200 species of papillomavirus most of them originating asintomatic infections or small injuries on the skin or mucous. Among them, just a few are transmitted by sexual contact, however the 80% of active sexual adults suffers a genital infection by papillomavirus, which can trigger to a cancer.

Beetwen sexual papillomes VPH16 are the most usual and aggressive, existing four groups of VPH16: A, B, C y D, being A the most dangerous. This variant pounced to humans with the first sexual contacts with Neandertals in Europe, that is why this virus does not exist in Subsaharian Africa.

"Each non african human carries between 2% and 6% of neandertal genome - affirms Pimenoff - the paper of this genes is involved in the defense, and casually they interact with the life cicle of this virus". So, this genes let virus keep alive and nest inside us.

It is unknown why this papillomavirus provokes cancer, but our genome conditions virus's behavior, in fact the aggressivity of this virus is different in europeans, compared to american and asian people. "Maybe the greater or less presence of this gens changes the behavior of the virus", upholds Bravo, but for the moment this is only an hipothesis.

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