Oral Sex Linked to Throat Cancer

Hold on... if oral sex could give you cancer doesn't that suggest that there are carcinogens present? If that were the case, our bits would be in serious trouble since they're exposed all the time?
 
Blue_UK said:
Hold on... if oral sex could give you cancer doesn't that suggest that there are carcinogens present? If that were the case, our bits would be in serious trouble since they're exposed all the time?
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If you read the article, it talks about transmission via oral sex of an HPV (virus) that can cause cancer. The study found women that had performed oral sex on more than 6 partners increased their chances of getting cancer from the virus 9-fold -- obviously due to increased risk of exposure to the virus with the increased number of sexual partners.

That's all.
 
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Mod note: This thread was in danger of going off the rails, so a number of off-topic posts have been removed. This is the thread for discussing the biology of HPV, HPV vaccination or viral-induced cancer. A forum like ‘Free Thoughts’ would be better suited to discussions on oral sex, per se.
 
Idle Mind said:
If you read the article, it talks about transmission via oral sex of an HPV (virus) that can cause cancer. The study found women that had performed oral sex on more than 6 partners increased their chances of getting cancer from the virus 9-fold -- obviously due to increased risk of exposure to the virus with the increased number of sexual partners.

That's all.
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women only or can this affect men as well? Should I make sure my son gets the immunization then?
 
no orleander, it does NOT only occure in women. It oviously only causes cervical cancer in women but the mouth and throat cancers are definitly a problem for males too
 
no ben, there is no reason it WONT work in men. Your right though that it hasnt been aproved for boys but thats because the goverment hasnt concidered it important. There was another thread i posted a while ago on this subject (in the health and fitness section from memory) by one of the top proffessors in England (from memory) calling for it to be rolled out across the board
 
once again thats wrong ben. Vaginal infections of HPV are very common, thats why they get cervical cancer. The reason the cost benift analysis is against male vacinations is ONLY because mouth and throat cancer is being ignored and the focus is purly on cervical cancer. Once you start to look at the fact that oral sex (HPV) is a bigger risk factor than smoking the numbers start to go against female only vacinations in a very strong way
 
Asguard said:
Once you start to look at the fact that oral sex (HPV) is a bigger risk factor than smoking the numbers start to go against female only vacinations in a very strong way
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Citation-Needed-wikipedia-819731_500_271.jpg
 
sorry, i thought you had actually read the thread i was talking about earlier. i mean it wasnt that hard to find concidering it was on the first page of health and fitness


http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=94870

Give Gardasil to boys too, experts say

By Dina Rosendorff for AM
ABC news radio

Recent evidence shows the human papilloma virus (HPV), which causes cervical cancer in women, is poised to become one of the leading causes of oral cancer in men because of changing sexual behaviours.

The findings have reignited the debate over whether boys should be given the cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil.

A visiting British virologist, Professor Margaret Stanley, says governments around the world need to examine the long-term economic and health benefits of immunising boys and young men.

The head of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at Melbourne's Royal Women's Hospital, Professor Suzanne Garland, says Australia is leading the way in the rollout of the cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil, which immunises against HPV.

"We are in our third year of rolling out the vaccine and we are in the order in the school-based group, in the high 70s, whereas in many other countries, they have only got 30 per cent who have been vaccinated," she said.

But now the vaccination debate has switched genders.

There are growing calls from the medical community for boys and young men to also be vaccinated against HPV.

Advocates include one of Britain's top cervical cancer specialists, Professor Margaret Stanley from Cambridge University, who says a cervical cancer jab in the arms of boys would not just be for the sake of girls.

"These HPVs don't just cause cancer in women. They cause it in men as well. Cancer in the mouth, cancer in the anus and those cancers are very hard to treat," she said.

"As an anti-cancer prevention strategy, I would have thought immunising boys was a sensible way to go."

Professor Stanley is visiting Melbourne as the guest speaker at a cervical cancer conference at the Royal Women's Hospital.


Increase

She says the rate of oral cancers linked to HPV is rising, and it is strongly associated with an increase in the practice of oral sex.

"There are some caused by alcohol and tobacco use and they are declining, but there is no doubt that the cancer caused by HPV are on an upward trajectory," she said.

Professor Suzanne Garland says there would be other benefits to vaccinating men against HPV.

"I think it would also help destigmatise this just being a female disease," she said.

The benefits exist, but critics say they do not outweigh the cost of a government-funded vaccination program for boys and young men.

However Professor Stanley rejects that categorically.

"The cost-effective modelling that is being done at the minute has actually not taken into account these other cancers," she said.

"It has really only looked at 'if we immunise boys, what effect will we have on cervix cancer' and I think they need to go back to their models and say 'if we immunise boys, what effect will have on these other cancers and what value for money will that be'."
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Asguard, that article doesn't say that HPV is a bigger risk than smoking. It says that tobacco related cases are declining and HPV related cases are increasing. There's a difference.
 
sorry that was a radio artical which was related to that story. Unfortuantly there is no online record of it that i have found.

I thought he wanted a citation on the fact that transmission women to men is possable and there for the artical.
 
Asguard said:
i did find this link however its figures seem made up concidering that if you take smoking and HPV alone that adds up to more than 100% of cancers
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The article is talking about risk factors associated with cancer. It's too simplistic to say ``smoking causes cancer'' or ``HPV causes cancer''. What the article does say is that HPV is estimated to be a factor in 20%-30% of mouth and throat cancer cases. Notice that 90% of people are smokers and 70% are heavy drinkers. So the correlation between HPV and throat/mouth cancers is much weaker than the correlation between throat/mouth cancer and smoking.

Also I should say that MORE than 20-30% of the population has HPV. Dr. Drew says (as my girlfriend informs me) that 80% of women by age 60 have some ofrm of HPV. Specific numbers aren't quoted on wikipedia, and I'm too lazy to do a google search. Anyway, if this is true, then one would expect roughly 80% of women who have throat/mouth cancer to also have HPV. The fact that it's only correlated to mouth/throat cancer 20% of the time is actually a bit amazing---imagine if 80% of women smoked.

In addition, I found this article as I was reading the BBC today:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8193639.stm

The recent rise in cases of mouth/throat cancers in the population today seems more stronly correlated with alcohol than HPV. Of course, HPV is a factor---but I was never arguing this. So, it's probably a better idea to first outlaw smoking and drinking, before we start vaccinating everybody.
 
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Ben, which strain of HPV was she talking about?
Further more i BELIVE (though im not 100% sure) that it is a targeted infection rather than a systemic one. Ie it only causes localised infections at the initial site of infection (rember that one form of it is responcable for cold sores which shows you how localised it is)

There for you would have to say that 80% of women have a HPV infection in there mouth where it can cause cancer and that 80% would have to be infected with one of the strains which CAUSES cancer. Personally i think that while she maybe correct in saying 80% of women have HPV that the majority probably have the strain which causes either herpies or cold sores rather than the strains which cause cancer and that the infections are surface infections around the outside of the mouth and or genitals rather than the more dangerious internal infections
 
Asguard said:
Ben, which strain of HPV was she talking about?
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I haven't seen anywhere where they've ever been distinguished.

Further more i BELIVE (though im not 100% sure) that it is a targeted infection rather than a systemic one. Ie it only causes localised infections at the initial site of infection (rember that one form of it is responcable for cold sores which shows you how localised it is)
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I don't know. Probably you're right.

There for you would have to say that 80% of women have a HPV infection in there mouth where it can cause cancer and that 80% would have to be infected with one of the strains which CAUSES cancer. Personally i think that while she maybe correct in saying 80% of women have HPV that the majority probably have the strain which causes either herpies or cold sores rather than the strains which cause cancer and that the infections are surface infections around the outside of the mouth and or genitals rather than the more dangerious internal infections
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This would be an easy calculation to do, though. You'd just have to figure out what percentage of people participated in oral sex with an infected partner. X% of infected men x Y% of women who said they had oral sex. My guess is that this number is bigger than 20% of women.

So let's take the 80% and call it a generous number. I'll assume that 80% of sexually active men have the disease.s [Source.]

Today, 70% of women aged 18-19 have had oral sex. [source]

So, it looks like 50% or so of women should have taken a dose of HPV in the mouth. Before you object---I agree, this is a large number. I didn't account for the fact that most of these cancers are showing up older people, who have a different set of sexual values. Maybe older women are less likely to have had oral sex. Also I didn't account for safe sex---probably you're supposed to wear a condom when you have oral sex.

So, then, 20%-30% sounds about right.
 
there was an artical which was talking about the differences ages ago but i cant even rember what media it was in (it was probably radio which makes locating it difficult) but they were saying that of the 100's of different strains only 4 (or it could have been 3) are responcable for the majority of cervical cancers. Now if you want to seriously work out the numbers on a realisitic level i would start with cervical cancer rates (pre vacination) because from what i rember those are the same strains which cause throat and mouth cancers (and i THINK i rember something about a small chance for penile cancer as well but it was a very low risk). If you were to look at rates of cervical cancer and alow some tolerance you would probably get a reasonable guess at the number of women with some form of infection with those strains.

As far as rates of oral sex (amongst women anyway) from what i rember 70% was the quoted number of women who perform it.

The problem is you are still stuck with the fact that its a local infection and is not always infecious either. Look at herpies (which as i said is another strain of the virus), lots of people have it for there whole life without passing it on to there partner.

I never ment to imply that oral sex was as big a risk factor as smoking (if it came out that way i apologise), but rather infection with the cancer causing strains of HPV was stated as being as big a risk factor.

The best way i can explain what i mean would be to say that sex is in and of itself a low risk factor for AIDs however infection with HIV is a 100% risk factor for the development of AIDs. Do you understand what i mean?
 
As far as numbers are concerned, I was just trying to get some idea (thinking out loud) about what types of numbers we were talking about.

Asguard said:
but rather infection with the cancer causing strains of HPV was stated as being as big a risk factor.
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Either way, I still find this pretty hard to believe. Cervical cancer is still relatively rare, in spite of 80% of women having some form of the disease. This means that either the disease is only weakly correlated with cancer, or that the strain of HPV responsible for cancer is relatively rare.

I don't know which strain is responsible for oral/throat cancer. But if it's the same as the one which causes cervical cancer, then the correlation has to be pretty weak.

There's a lot about both sides of this debate that neither one of us seem to know.
 
i do agree (when i have time i will see if cochrane has anything on this) but it still seems silly NOT to vacinate boys when it would be so easy to do so and provide not just a benifit to women (which is what the argument for vacination against rebella is) but also a benift to themselves. I mean we vacinate against chicken pox at the goverments expense and i have never herd of anyone dying from chicken pox (or even shingles which i know is worse)
 
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