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Of the hundreds of human papillomaviruses that infect humans, two, HPV16 and HPV18, are particularly dangerous because they act as powerful oncogenic factors. Very often, this infection causes the development of cancers of the cervix and throat, mouth and lips.
Robert Burk, a virologist at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York, discovered the origin of HPV by analyzing the history of this disease.
Burk and colleagues compared genotypes of 212 human HPV16 (and partial genotypes of more than 3,500 viruses) isolated from patients around the world. This allowed to reconstruct a relatively recent history of the disease and to show that the selection of the "human" line took place about 618,000 years ago, after which HPV16 was divided into four subtypes that were widespread in Eurasia. This period coincides with the time of the emergence of Neanderthals and their migration across the continent.
The HPV16 A subtype in Africa is still almost non-existent, but its A1-3 varieties are widespread in Europe, while the A4 is present in Asia. According to the authors of the study published in PLOS Pathogens, this indicates the transmission of Neanderthal virus to modern humans through sexual contact over the past 80,000 years.
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