PUNCH
Oral sex could fuel the rising number of throat cancer cases, according to health experts.
UK radio presenter Jamie Theakston, 53, has revealed his diagnosis of stage one laryngeal cancer after listeners noticed a change in his voice.
Theakston announced this week that he will be taking a break from his role on Heart Radio, reports Mail Online Tuesday.
“Around 70 per cent of throat cancer cases are caused by HPV,” said Dr Hisham Mehanna from the University of Birmingham, adding that multiple oral sex partners can increase the risk up to ninefold.
Doctors have long linked smoking and alcohol consumption to head and neck cancers, but new research points to human papillomavirus (HPV) as a significant contributor.
He said people with multiple oral sex partners have an up to nine-fold increased risk of throat cancer, also known as oropharyngeal cancer.
He wrote in The Conversation that there has been a “rapidly increasing throat cancer in the west’ to the extent some have called it ‘an epidemic’.”
Around eight in ten people will carry HPV on their body at some point, with around a third of the population infected at any one time, research shows.
It is most commonly found on and around the genitals, and usually causes no problems—the virus is so considered so harmless that its immune system doesn’t naturally try to fight it off.
However, for reasons that aren’t fully understood, the virus can invade body tissues and trigger cell changes that lead to cancer.
There are over 150 types of HPV, but only about 12 can cause cancer. HPV 16 and 18 are the most common high-risk strains that can cause oropharyngeal cancer.
The UK and US are both experiencing a “throat cancer epidemic,” with around 12,800 new cases annually in the UK and approximately 71,100 in the US.
