Men who have oral sex with multiple partners at risk of throat cancer, doctors warn

Doctors have warned men who perform oral sex on multiple partners that they have a higher risk of developing throat cancer.

A new study analysed behaviour and medical records of 13,089 people between the ages of 20 and 69, and found a link between oral sex and throat cancer.

The study found that smokers performing oral sex on multiple partners are at risk of cancer caused by exposure to the human papilloma virus, also known as HPV.

According to the New York Post, only 0.7 per cent of men will develop throat cancer. However, the virus that causes cancer is more common, as 8 out of 10 people are thought to be infected with HPV at some point.

There are hundreds of different types of HPV and, while most are harmless, around 12% can cause cancer. HPV16 causes most throat cancers, which appears at the back of the throat, base of the tongue or tonsils.

HPV-related throat cancers have tripled in British men and doubled in British women between 1995 and 2011, and it’s estimated that it will overtake cervical cancer in 2020, which affects around 13,000 women a year.

Speaking to the New York Post, associate professor Dr. Amber D’Souza at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, 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.”

Men aged 20 to 69 had a frequency infection of 6 per cent, while men aged 50 to 59 were most likely to have an infection.

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