Jakarta – Oral sex is a risk factor for oropharyngeal cancer. This is a type of throat cancer that attacks the tonsils and the back of the throat.
This was revealed by a cancer expert from England. He found there had been a rapid increase in cases of throat cancer in recent decades.
Quoted from detikHealthAlthough throat cancer is often thought of as a result of smoking, the main cause of oropharyngeal cancer is the human papillomavirus (HPV), which is also the main cause of cervical cancer.
“In both the US and the UK, oropharyngeal cancer is now more common than cervical cancer, said Dr Hisham Mehanna, professor at the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Cancer Sciences and Genomics. The Insider.
Because HPV is sexually transmitted, for oropharyngeal cancer, the main risk factor is the number of lifetime sexual partners, especially oral sex.
“Those who had six or more lifetime oral sex partners were 8.5 times more likely to develop oropharyngeal cancer than those who did not engage in oral sex,” he added.
A study Mehanna recently conducted, however, suggests that while this is recorded around 80 per cent of UK adults report having oral sex at some point in their lives.
“The prevailing theory is that most of us acquire an HPV infection and are able to ‘clear’ it completely,” he wrote.
In patients who cannot clear HPV, continued Mehanna, the virus is able to replicate continuously, and from time to time integrates at random positions into the host’s DNA.
Mehanna also recommended that governments in each country start launching the HPV vaccine program, which so far has been specifically for young women to prevent cervical cancer, to also be given to men as a preventive measure.
Thus, he hopes that the increase in oropharyngeal cancer can be reduced by practicing safe sex and being vaccinated against the virus.
This article was published on detikHealth with the title Experts Find Oral Sex to be a Major Risk Factor for Throat Cancer
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2023-07-30 17:05:48
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