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A new study reveals that oral sex is driving an “epidemic” of throat cancer in the U.S.
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Prof. Hisham Mehanna of the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences at the University of Birmingham is pointing the finger at the human papillomavirus.
“For oropharyngeal cancer, the main risk factor is the number of lifetime sexual partners, especially oral sex,” he wrote for The Conversation.
According to the American Cancer Society, cases of HPV-linked oropharyngeal cancer rose by 1.3% in women and 2.8% in men between 2015 and 2019. About 70% of oropharyngeal cancers are caused by HPV infection.
The cancer affects the tonsils, base of the tongue and the back of the throat.
Promiscuity or multiple sexual partners hikes the risk of catching HPV. People with more than 10 oral sex partners were more than four times more likely to develop this kind of cancer.
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Particularly worrying is the practice of oral sex among teenagers with 41% in the 15 to 19 age bracket saying they participated in oral sex. The same group expanded up to age 24 were responsible for a whopping 50% of the 26 million new STD infections in 2018.
HPV affects an estimated 42 million Americans. The Centers for Disease Control noted that “nearly all sexually active men and women get the virus at some point in their lives.”
Most people clear the largely harmless virus on their own with no medical blowback. But some don’t.
“However, a small number of people are not able to get rid of the infection, maybe due to a defect in a particular aspect of their immune system,” writes Mehanna.
“In those patients, the virus is able to replicate continuously, and over time integrates at random positions into the host’s DNA, some of which can cause the host cells to become cancerous.”
American Association for Cancer Research study author Eric Adjei Boakye adds: “Over 90% of HPV-associated cancers could be prevented with the HPV vaccination, yet vaccine uptake remains suboptimal.”
bhunter@postmedia.com
@HunterTOSun
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