Oral Sex Linked To Increased Risk Of Throat Cancer

London (dBTechno) – What’s more likely to give you throat cancer: smoking, alcohol use, or oral sex?

As it turns out, the risk of throat cancer isn’t just higher, it’s nine times higher for people who have had oral sex with more than six partners.

In a recently published analysis of head and neck cancer rates in the U.S., researchers from Houstonb’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center found the incidence of throat cancer to be stagnant and even rising in some populations, defying a downward trend in other head and neck cancers linked more closely with smoking.

As shocking as it sounds, it really shouldn’t be all that surprising. Previous studies have shown that HPV is behind most cases of cervical cancer, and that 80% of sexually active women will get an HPV infection at some point in their lives. So, it only follows that we’d see similar numbers when it comes to oral sex.

Still, the statistics — especially that oral sex is nine-time more likely to give you throat cancer than smoking — are pretty alarming.

Before you swear off oral sex forever, you know should that most HPV infections are relatively innocuous — clearing with little or no symptoms. In fact, researchers stress that “oropharyngeal cancer is relatively uncommon and the overwhelming majority of people with an oral HPV infection probably will not get throat cancer.”

however, the study does stress the importance of research aimed at determining if the newly available HPV vaccine is effective in males, researcher Erich Sturgis, M.D., MPH, tells WebMD.

“The vaccine has been shown to be almost 100% effective for preventing cervical infection,” he says. “We would encourage the medical community and [vaccine] industry to study its role in preventing this oral cancer.”

A small percentage of people will contract a high-risk strain, and in those cases, they are more prone to developing the disease.

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