Oral sex shouldn’t have couples fearing for their lives, whether in monogamous or open relationships, but a recent study reveals that men who have numerous oral sexual partners may increase their risk of head and neck cancer. This is also true for men who smoke. This makes smoking and oral sex partners the highest risk category for men.
As the rate of individuals being diagnosed with oropharyngeal (center of the throat) cancer is low – only 7.0 percent of men being diagnosed and an even lower percent in women – the study determines that oropharyngeal squamous cell cancer related to HPV has doubled among men over the past 20 years. By the year 2020, it is estimated that oropharyngeal cancer will become an even bigger issue in America than cervical cancer.
Author of this study, Dr. Amber D’Souza, associate professor at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said: “Most people perform oral sex in their lives, and we found that oral infection with cancer-causing HPV was rare among women regardless of how many oral sex partners they had. Among men who did not smoke, cancer-causing oral HPV was rare among everyone who had less than five oral sex partners, although the chances of having oral HPV infection did increase with the number of oral sex partners, and with smoking.”
The study, published in Annals of Oncology, included 13, 089 people between the ages of 20 and 69, all of which had been tested for oral HPV infection. Then data was used in oropharyngeal cancer cases in America and deaths to predict the cancer risk from oral HPV.
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