Oral sex may be the biggest factor in the rise of throat cancer.
Oral sex is a commonly performed act of foreplay involving the kissing or licking of the genital area to pleasure a partner.
According to Dr. Hisham Mehanna, a professor at the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences at the University of Birmingham, said that there has been a “rapid increase” in oropharyngeal cancer, a type of throat cancer, in the past two decades, calling it an “epidemic” in both the U.S. and U.K.
“For oropharyngeal cancer, the main risk factor is the number of lifetime sexual partners, especially oral sex,” Mehanna wrote for The Conversation. “Those with six or more lifetime oral-sex partners are 8.5 times more likely to develop oropharyngeal cancer than those who do not practise oral sex.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that 70% of oropharyngeal cancers in the United States are caused by HPV, or human papillomavirus.
HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection, with 3 million new cases in the U.S. each year. Many people will live their lives without ever knowing that they have HPV, but for some, it can develop into cancer.
According to the American Cancer Society, cases of oropharyngeal cancer linked to HPV increased yearly by 1.3% in women and by 2.8% in men between 2015 and 2019.
Though people with HPV infections often “clear them completely,” Mehanna said others can develop severe symptoms.
“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,” he explained. “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.”
According to the CDC, it normally takes years for cancer to manifest itself following an HPV infection. The health organisation also notes that it is, however, unclear whether the presence of HPV on its own is enough to cause oropharyngeal cancers, or if other factors — such as smoking or chewing tobacco, results in oropharyngeal malignancies.
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