DOCTORS believe a woman who survived throat cancer got it from ORAL SEX.

Carol Kanga, 52, could not swallow and had to be fed through a stomach tube when she underwent chemotherapy and radiation between 2006 to 2007.

The treatment was successful, but scientists said the virus that struck her is human papilloma virus (HPV), which is responsible for CERVICAL cancer.

With 6,000 cases per year and an annual increase of up to ten per cent in men younger than 60, some researchers say the HPV-linked throat cancers could overtake cervical cancer in the next decade.

No-one understands the reason for the increase in throat cancer, but experts believe it is linked to changes in sexual practises that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s during the Baby Boomers generation.

Shocking ... a throat cancer victim

For example, oral sex is a known risk factor for HPV-related throat cancers, and studies have shown that people who have come of age since the 1950s are more likely to have engaged in oral sex than those who were born earlier.

"Those people were in their teens during the sexual revolution, so they may be leading the wave," said Dr Maura Gillison, a professor of oncology and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Centre, Baltimore.

The virus targets a specific part of the upper throat, which includes the tonsils and base of the tongue.

Just a decade ago, doctors believed nearly all such cancers were linked with smoking or extremely heavy drinking.

Last year, however, Gillison's team published a major study that found stark differences between the risky behaviours of throat cancer patients with HPV and those without.

The HPV-positive cancer patients tended to have had higher numbers of sex partners than the others and were far more likely to have had multiple oral-sex partners.

The virus-linked cancer appears somewhat less deadly than throat cancers that arise from smoking or drinking.

A paper published this year found 96 per cent of HPV-positive patients survived at least two years after diagnosis, compared with 62 per cent survival for HPV-negative cancers.

"They have a better prognosis, but these are still very aggressive cancers," said Dr Marshall Posner, medical director of head and neck oncology at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Centre in Boston.

The virus thrives in the outer layer of skin and is transmitted mostly by skin-to-skin contact, researchers think. Sexual transmission tends to cause infection near the site of contact; intercourse is linked with cervical cancer, while oral sex can cause cancer of the upper throat.

Ms Kanga said: "We can't be afraid to talk about this. The message that oral sex carries risks is just not out there."


OMG THIS IS SO NASTY