Oral sex can dramatically increase the risk of head and neck cancers, a new study has declared. While the disease has been traditionally known to affect smokers and heavy drinkers later in life, oral sex has been linked to the common human papillomavirus (HPV).
The study also revealed that oral sex has been the main way cervical cancer has ended up in the mouth. HPV typically affects the skin and moist membrane that line the body, including the anus, cervix, mouth and throat. While the disease will not directly trigger cancers, it can cause changes in the cells that it has infected which can then become cancerous.
HPV-16 is the most popular cause of oropharyngeal tumor, which affects the middle part of the throat, including the soft palate, tongue and tonsils. It is the 11th most common cancer as half a million patients are diagnosed with it in a year.
The new study is the first to conclusively show that HPV-16's presence in the mouth can lead to the development of oropharyngeal cancer. The study was published in the journal JAMA Oncology and was carried out at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, as cited by the Daily Mail
"It's already established that the HPV is linked to some types of mouth and throat cancer and this research adds an important part to that evidence," Dr. Jana Witt, Cancer Research UK's health information officer said.
In the United Kingdom, the HPV vaccine is routinely given to adolescent girls because it is known that nearly all cervical cancers are HPV-related. The vaccine also protects them from vulvar, vaginal, anal and oral cancer.
Adolescent boys are not routinely given the HPV vaccine in the UK because they do not need to be protected against cervical cancer. Men who have sex with men, however, may have an increased risk of anal cancer, which is linked to the HPV infection.
As the HPV vaccine reduces the number of cases of women infected with HPV, the disease will be less common in the general population and will, therefore, affect fewer women and men. This demonstration already happened in Australia where cases of people with genital wars drastically fell after four years since the start of the campaign.
Oral sex can be made safer by using a condom on a man's penis, according to NHS. The condom will act as a barrier between the mouth and the sexual organ.
