Oral sex increases the risk of cancer

The contagion ofhuman papillomavirus (HPV)through theoral sexis currently themain cause of oropharyngeal cancer, that is to say, of tumors that originate in the back part of the tongue, the palate, the tonsils or the throat. This is deduced from a study funded by the US National Cancer Institute and published in the latest issue of the journalJournal of Clinical Oncology.

As confirmed by Maura Gillison and her colleagues at Ohio State University (USA), infection with thehuman papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted virus, has surpassed tobacco and alcohol as a cause of oral cancer, two of the risk factors historically associated with this disease. Specifically, the number of people who were diagnosed with HPV-linked oral cancer in 2004 was three times the number diagnosed in 1988. This is largely due, researchers suspect, to changes in sexual behavior that helped spread the virus.

HPV is a very common sexually transmitted virus that can cause genital warts and certain types of cancer, including cancer of the cervix, anus, and penis. “The relationship between HPV and head and neck cancer totally changes our idea of who is at risk, how to treat the cancer, its prognosis and prevention,” the research authors indicate.

The good news, Gillison says, is that ethere is an HPV vaccine, which is approved to prevent cervical and anal cancer. If the vaccine can prevent these HPV cancers in the genital area, it may also work for oropharyngeal cancers.