A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has shown that 10.1% of American men are infected with oral HPV, compared to only 3.6% of women. People with oral HPV infections are 50 times more likely to get oral cancer than people who do not have HPV.

Oral cancers have significantly increased over the last three decades in several countries and HPV has been directly implicated as the underlying cause, according to a Sapa report.

The study

To collect their date, researchers had 5579 participants do a 30-second oral rinse test at a mobile examination centre. Oral HPV was found to be more prevalent among people who had more lifetime or recent sex partners, and was also more frequent in current smokers, heavy alcohol drinkers and among former and current marijuana (dagga) users.

The findings shed more light on a growing epidemic of HPV-linked head and neck cancers which are expected to eclipse cervical cancer cases by 2020, and could warrant clinical trials of an HPV vaccine against oral lesions, the study authors said in a Sapa report. Currently the HPV vaccine is recommended for girls and boys as early as age nine and 10 to prevent cervical and anal cancers.

Sexual link

Lead author, Maura Gillison of the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Centre in the US, said the data suggests that a sexual link is likely the cause of the oral HPV infections that researchers saw.

“Taken together, these data indicate that transmission by casual, non-sexual contact is likely to be unusual,” she wrote, urging more study in this area to establish what researchers call the “natural history” of a disease.

The study was funded in part by the pharmaceutical giant Merck, which makes a vaccine against HPV.

Source: Sapa/AFP, HealthDay News