How Many Viruses are in the Human Body?

There are approximately 10 Trillion viruses in a single human body. That is 10x the amount of money lost yearly from food waste in the U.S. alone.

You’d think that you would be very sick or even dead, right?

Wrong!

It turns out that viruses aren’t entirely the super villains they’ve been painted to be; there are benefits of viruses that often go unnoticed, but which play an important role in our healthcare.

For years, news has been focused on the disease-causing side of viruses, but the disease-preventing side of viruses are playing a crucial role in the world today. This role will become even bigger with advances in AI and Organoid Intelligence.

Here are 3 mind-blowing benefits of viruses that you should know!

Viruses Help Cure Cancer

Cancer cells don’t have strong antiviral defences, making them vulnerable to infections. Viral infections can sometimes lead to certain cancers. For instance, HPV (Human Papillomavirus) is implicated to cause cervical cancer.

On the other hand, this means that viruses can also kill cancer cells. If they are used by researchers to specifically target these cancer cells, then viruses can even help cure cancer.

While the benefits of viruses include killing cancer cells, the only problem is that these viruses can also kill healthy cells in the process.

How Can Viruses Cure Cancer?

Oncolytic viruses (OVs) are viruses that kill tumors. While Oncolytic viruses can be found in nature, they are also modified by scientists to attack tumours without harming healthy cells.

Oncolytic viruse therapy is a cancer treatment that uses OVs to target cancer cells over healthy cells. It does this by activating a ‘danger signals” that makes tumours less immune to viruses.

The result is an effective treatment that can help viruses cure cancer.

Viruses Treat Genetic Disorders

Among the benefits of viruses is that they treat genetic disorders. Viruses are very good at delivering genetic materials into cells, which make them useful for gene therapy. Scientists have developed what are called “viral vectors”. Viral vectors are tools that use modified viruses to transport a functional gene to cells that need them. When the cells receive these genes, they begin to function properly and could be used to treat genetic disorders.

How do Viruses Help With Gene Therapy?

Before a virus is used as a viral vector, it is “defanged”. Like the name suggests, to defang means to remove the part of something that could be dangerous. By defanging a virus and using it as a vehicle to deliver genes to cells, viruses can treat genetic disorders in ways that do not harm the cells.

Among the genetic disorders that viruses can help treat are sickle cell disease (SCD) and Leber congenital amaurosis (LSA).

• Sickle cell disease (SCD): SCD is a disorder where hemoglobin is defective in red blood cells. Hemoglobin is used to deliver oxygen to the blood. With SCD, hemoglobin molecules stick together, causing a variety of serious issues. By using viruses in gene therapy, a modified hemoglobin gene is delivered to the red blood cells as treatment.
• Leber congenital amaurosis (LSA): LSA is a rare and inherited eye disease that causes vision loss early in life. Virus vectors have been shown to be successful in reversing the retinal diseases. One such case was Carlene Knight, who began to see colours again after treatment.

Viruses Create Vaccines

Viruses are often used to create vaccines. Vaccines contain weakened forms of the virus they hope to prevent. By giving someone a vaccine with a weakened form of a virus, an immune response is triggered without the person receiving the disease. This trigger will allow the body to learn how to fight off the infection without overreacting. The result is that when the immune system comes into contact with the virus again, it is prepared to destroy the virus quickly and efficiently.

The most clear benefits of viruses to humans can be found by looking at the chickenpox vaccine. The chicken pox vaccine was created by Dr. Michiaki Takahashi in the 1970s and uses a weakened form of varicella virus. The vaccine has since saved millions of people.  

The Benefits of Viruses in the Future

The human microbiome is a community of microorganisms that live in our body. Your body is a superorganism that includes cells that cohabit with fungi, bacteria, and, most abundant of all, viruses. However, until a decade ago, scientists didn’t know much about the human virome — the viruses that inhabit us. 

Today, they’ve barely scratched the surface, but at least they understand that the virome is a critical part of your microbiome. Virus benefits can be found in every corner you check. You’ve got viruses on your skin, mouth, blood, lungs; everywhere.

Mohammadsharif Tabebordbar is among the scientists dedicating his life to studying the benefits of viruses to humans. He even led the creation of an experimental gene therapy that treats genetic muscle disorders. 

“When I hear the word virus, I’m not scared anymore,” Tabebordbar aptly told the Harvard Medicine Magazine. “I ask, ‘Okay, what type of virus? What does it do? What are the implications?'”

Viruses are crucial to our survival. They support much of life on our planet, and without viruses, life on Earth as we know it would cease to exist.