In case you were wondering, you read that headline correctly. According to Dr. Hisham Mehanna, a professor at the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, oral sex may be the leading factor in the increase of throat cancer cases in the United States.
“Those with six or more lifetime oral-sex partners are 8.5 times more likely to develop oropharyngeal cancer,” says Mehanna.
In the past two decades, a “rapid increase” in oropharyngeal cancer, which is a type of throat cancer, has become an “epidemic” in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
“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.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that 70% of oropharyngeal cancer cases in the United States are caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), the most common sexually transmitted infection, with 3 million new cases in the U.S. each year. Although many people will live their lives without knowing they have HPV, for others, there is a possibility it can lead to cancer.
From 2015 to 2019, cases of oropharyngeal cancer related to HPV increased by 1.3% yearly in women and by 2.8% in men, according to the American Cancer Society. While some individuals with HPV infections clear them up, others may develop severe symptoms, according to Dr. Mehanna.
The CDC reports that it takes years after being infected with HPV for cancer to develop, and it is unclear if having HPV alone is sufficient to cause oropharyngeal cancer, or if other factors, such as smoking or chewing tobacco, interact with HPV to cause these cancers.
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