Skip to main content

More men 'have oral cancer virus'

Oral human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is more common among men than women, leading to an increased risk for men of head and neck cancers, a US study suggests.
The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study assessed around 5,500 people aged 14 to 69.
Around 10% of men had oral HPV, compared with 3.6% of women.
HPV causes the majority of cervical cancers, as well as genital and anal - and head and neck cancers.
Smoking and drinking are significant known risk factors for head and neck cancers. But oral HPV infection increases cancer risk by around 50%, according to the research team from Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center.
They say the incidence of head and neck cancers has significantly increased over the last three decades, and HPV has been directly implicated as an underlying cause.
The researchers used data from a cross-sectional study as part of the 2009-10 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
They all provided a skin cell samples for testing from their mouths, and were interviewed about their lifestyles and sexual history.
Overall prevalence of oral HPV infection was 7%.
Prevalence of HPV increased with lifetime or recent number of partners for any kind of sex, vaginal sex, or oral sex.
Writing in JAMA, the team led by Dr Maura Gillison, said their findings should influence research into the existing HPV vaccines and how effective they could be in preventing oral cancers.
"Vaccine efficacy against oral HPV infection is unknown, and therefore vaccination cannot currently be recommended for the primary prevention of oropharyngeal cancer.
"Given an analysis of US cancer registry data recently projected that the number of HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancers diagnosed each year will surpass that of invasive cervical cancers by the year 2020, perhaps such vaccine trials are warranted."
Jessica Harris, health information manager at Cancer Research UK, said: "As we learn how common HPV infections in the mouth are, and how they are passed on, we can understand more about who is most at risk and how people can reduce the risk of HPV-related cancers.
"Although there isn't yet any evidence to show whether HPV vaccination is effective at preventing oral HPV infections, results like these are vital to help inform prevention programmes in the future."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Contact Precautions May Have Unintended Consequences

Contact precautions, including gloves, gowns, and isolated rooms, have helped stem the transmission of hospital pathogens but have also had some negative consequences, according to findings from a new study. Healthcare worker (HCWs) visited patients on contact precautions less frequently than other patients and spent less time with those patients when they did visit, report Daniel J. Morgan, MD, from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs (VA) Maryland Health Care System, Baltimore, and colleagues. Moreover, patients on contact precautions also received fewer outside visitors. "Less contact with HCWs suggests that other unintended consequences of contact precautions still exist," Dr. Morgan and coauthors write. "The resulting decrease in HCW contact may lead to increased adverse events and a lower quality of patient care due to less consistent patient monitoring and poorer adherence to standard adverse event prevention methods (such...
Post a Comment
Read more

FDA Decision Delayed for Truvada in HIV PrEP

June 11, 2012 — The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has delayed its decision on allowing the use of tenofovir disoproxil fumarate/emtricitabine ( Truvada , Gilead) as preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) so that the proposed risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS) can be reviewed. In early May, the FDA's Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee  strongly backed  approval of the first-ever drug for the prevention of sexually acquired HIV-1 infection. However, concerns by the panel at the time included that people may neglect condom use if they feel they are protected by PrEP. Panelists were also concerned that uninfected people taking PrEP who become infected with HIV may not switch to a 3-drug regimen as recommended. According to the company, the FDA has postponed the target date to September 14 so it can review Gilead's REMS plan to help ensure that patients will not misuse the drug. The committee's recommendation for supplemental approval of tenofovir/emtricit...
Post a Comment
Read more

Antidepressants Linked to Higher Diabetes Risk in Kids

Pediatric patients who use antidepressants may have an elevated risk for type 2 diabetes, the authors of a new study report. In a retrospective cohort study of more than 119,000 youths 5 to 20 years of age, the risk for incident type 2 diabetes was nearly twice as high among current users of certain types of antidepressants as among former users, Mehmet Burcu, PhD, and colleagues report in an article  published online October 16 in  JAMA Pediatrics . The risk intensified with increasing duration of use, greater cumulative doses, and higher daily doses of these antidepressants. The findings point to a growing need for closer monitoring of these products, including greater balancing of risks and benefits, in the pediatric population, the authors caution. They undertook the study because, despite growing evidence of an association between antidepressant use and an increased risk for type 2 diabetes in adults, similar research in pediatric patients was scarce. "To our know...
Post a Comment
Read more