JOE.CO – Oral sex is causing an “epidemic” of throat cancer, with the practice being more damaging than smoking, boozing and a bad diet.
It is now more common than cervical cancer in the UK and US, an expert has said.
Much of this is due to one particular type of throat cancer – oropharyngeal cancer – which affects the area of the tonsils and back of the throat and is due to the human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is also the main cause of cancer of the cervix.
HPV is the name of a very common group of viruses, according to the NHS. It states that “they do not cause any problems in most people, but some types can cause genital warts or cancer. HPV affects the skin”. There are more than 100 different types.
Dr Hisham Mehanna, from the UK’s University of Birmingham, said people with multiple oral sex partners were more than eight times more likely to develop the cancer.
Writing in The Conversation, Dr Mehanna said: “Over the past two decades, there has been a rapid increase in throat cancer in the West, to the extent that some have called it an epidemic.
Medical experts have pegged HPV infection to be the biggest risk factor for developing the disease.
“The prevailing theory is that most of us catch HPV infections and are able to clear them completely,” Mehanna writes.
“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 …
