If a colleague asked my opinion as a healthcare professional on which HPV strains should be covered in a new treatment, I would recommend HPVs 31 and 45. This recommendation is based off Sarid and Gao’s article Viruses and Human Cancer: From Detection to Causality. While it would be beneficial to treat all strains, the cost of creating it would become very expensive. Therefore the benefit of each should outweigh the cost.
While cancer is often thought of as non-infectious, there are known viruses to cause cancer. Virus can carry oncogenes, or cancerous genes, which are incorporated into human genes upon infection. Human Papillomavirus, also known as HPV, is one such virus. HPV strains 16, 18, 31 and 45 are considered carcinogenic and cause around 80% of cervical cancers in women. Other known strains are HPVs 33, 35, 39, 51, 52, 56, 58, and 59 but are only considered probably carcinogenic to humans. Therefore, it is more beneficial to treat strains which do cause a majority of cervical cancers, rather than those that are probable.
Today, however, there are vaccines already created for HPVs 16 and 18, therefore to be most cost beneficial in creating a treatment, the strains 31 and 45 should be prioritized. This treatment should then be given to women to further prevent the spread of HPV. With a limited spread of this virus, then hopefully the number of cervical cancers will decrease with it.
