The US and UK are suffering from an 'epidemic' of throat cancer – and experts are pointing to oral sex as the culprit.
Dr Hisham Mehanna, from the University of Birmingham in the UK, said 70 per cent of throat cancer cases are caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), a normally harmless sexually transmitted virus that has been linked to many forms of cancer.
Dr Mehanna said people with multiple oral sex partners have up to a ninefold higher risk of throat cancer.
He wrote in The Conversation: "Over the past two decades, there has been a rapid increase in throat cancer in the West, to the extent that some have called it an epidemic. This has been due to a large increase in a specific type of throat cancer called oropharyngeal cancer." Oropharyngeal cancer is the most common type of throat cancer. It appears in the tonsils and the back of the throat. Doctors consider HPV infection to be the biggest risk factor for the development of the disease.
Dr Mehanna continued: 'HPV is sexually transmitted. For oropharyngeal cancer, the main risk factor is the number of lifetime sex partners, especially oral sex.
Those who have six or more lifetime oral sex partners are 8.5 times more likely to develop oropharyngeal cancer than those who do not practice oral sex.
More than 50,000 cases of oral or oropharyngeal cancer are diagnosed each year in the US, causing more than 10,000 deaths annually.
The number of cases is increasing, however, by up to 1.3 percent a year in women and 2.8 percent in men, according to the American Cancer Society.
Doctors have found that oral sex is the biggest risk factor for them – surpassing smoking, alcohol consumption and an unhealthy diet.
