2 ms·
Dumb question alert. Could the common cold be fighting off early stages of throat or mouth cancers whenever we get sick?
by mrfusion 7y ago
Dumb question alert. Could the common cold be fighting off early stages of throat or mouth cancers whenever we get sick?
- gbrown 7y agoThat would be some super interesting co-evolution. My guess is "no", but only for armchair reasons - way outside my area of expertise. My understanding is that mouth and throat cancers are realy uncommon before middle age, so the moderate but ubiquitous fitness loss from the cold is probably worse, evolutionarily speaking, than the substantial but infrequent fitness loss from dying of cancer later in life. It seems plausible, however, that the mutations which make cells cancerous might also impair their response to viral infection. /armchair
- hwillis 7y agoThe WHO estimates that 18% of cancers are caused by viruses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncovirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncovirus In general you'd think that viruses are good to avoid if you don't want cancer. Once they invade a cell they're basically just bits of RNA floating around waiting to fuck up your DNA.
- z3t4 7y agoA cold is basically a defence response that attacks everything