27th January, 2011
If you engage in oral sex, then be careful as a study has linked it with two types of cancer.
Cancers of the tonsil (clumps of tissue on both sides of the throat that help fight infections) and throat have increased in recent times among middle-aged and younger people, and experts believe it’s triggered by the human papillomavirus (HPV), which can be transmitted through oral sex, Health Day News, an American health research journal, has reported.
This same virus has been found to be the primary cause of cancer of the cervix in women.
A Professor of head and neck surgery at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, Dr. Greg Hartig, said it was “ a pretty good link that more sexual activity, particularly oral sex, is associated with increased HPV infection.â€
Another expert, William Lydiatt, a Professor of head and neck surgical oncology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, was reported as saying that the incidence of other throat cancers had decreased because fewer people are smoking and drinking, which are traditionally risk factors.
“It’s gotten to the point now where 60 to 70 percent of all tonsil cancers in are HPV-related,†Lydiatt said.
A study appearing in a past issue of the New England Journal of Medicine had found that those people who had six or more oral sex partners in their life had a risk 3.4 times higher for oropharyngeal cancer.
—Eromosele Ebhomele
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