Well, HSV is our buddy herpes.  HPV is a large family of viruses that cause
warts.  Any wart that you get on your body is an HPV virus.  However, there
are HPV viruses that don't have any outward wart symptoms but are suspected
to be the cause of cervical cancer.  HPV is transferred through skin to skin
contact.

ar

HSV stands for Herpes Simplex Virus. So thats HSV1 and 2 which as their
primary disease mode cause blistery skin lesions. Maintains itself and
evades the immune system by hiding in nerve cell bodies and reactivating
from there after setting up its lifelong infection. A selection of drugs
exist to shut down virus replication to help treat any given outbreak of
disease.

HPV stands for Human Papilloma Virus. Actually there are a LOT of these,
loads of different strains each with some alphanumeric identifier.
Different ones causes different things. THe commonest thing you see are
warts in various locations, be it genital warts, verrucas (IIRC) and other
skin warts. Another slection of strains/subtypes are linked to cervical
cancer. I'd have to go look up exactly how long infections last but I
think some people can act as carriers without noticeable symptoms (though
that might simply be certain strains). Treatments exist for some skin
warts (like salicylic acid based ones) and there is imiquimod as a pretty
targetted treatment as well.

Tim
--
When playing rugby, its not the winning that counts, but the taking apart
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