Why Do I Have Warts?

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Warts can crop up at any time, although they tend to affect some age group more than others. When warts develop it’s natural to feel a bit concerned about why you have them, and the answers you are looking for should be within this article

Why do I develop warts?

‘Wart’ is a general term for a family of skin growths that are a consequence of infection from the human papillomavirus. You develop a wart because of what happens on contact with the virus, which essentially works its way into your skin and infects skin cells called epithelia. Once in those epithelia the virus replicates itself and drives its host cells to grow and duplicate faster than they normally would, resulting in an abnormal, but more often than not perfectly benign, growth. Warts can vary in appearance, shape, size, and colour. They can come in ones and twos or in a massive cluster, they can be round and rough or flat and smooth, the colour of your skin or white, all of these depending on where the infection happens and what particular type of HPV you are infected by. There are in fact over 130 different types of HPV, most of which are called ‘low risk’ HPV because they are benign and pose no danger to your health. A minority of less common HPVs are dubbed ‘high risk’ because of a link to cancer.

Why are some people more vulnerable to warts than others?

You may find yourself vulnerable to warts and have them growing on different parts of your body at different times. While it’s always a good idea to have yourself checked out by a doctor, chances are you have nothing to worry about. Our bodies are all different, and some of us will be particularly susceptible to certain kinds of infection, while others will be remarkably impervious to some viruses and bacteria despite, for example, being surrounded by sick people. This comes down to individual immune systems and how well they learn to cope with certain types of disease bearing organisms.

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