Most people have seen the advertisements featuring the beautiful women walking along the beach wondering how they are going to keep their recently acquired genital warts from ruining their perfect figures.
Now they have even more to be worried about as a recent study has found a link between human papillomavirus (HPV) and throat cancer.
Published in the "New England Journal of Medicine," the study found a strong correlation between oral sex and throat cancer due to the transmission of HPV, a sexually transmitted disease that has been linked with cervical cancer for years.
The study found that individuals who have had five or more oral sex partners are 250 percent more likely to develop throat cancer than those who do not have oral sex.
"When you think about throat cancer, you think about people in their 50s and 60s and usually they had risk factors including smoking and drinking heavily," said Kerry Redican, professor of personal health. "Young people were really not at risk."
Smoking and drinking increase the risk of throat cancer three times, while study participants who had an infection of the HPV-16 strain were 58 times more likely to have throat cancer.
"I would imagine this would eventually lead the National Cancer Institute and Center for Disease Control (CDC) to make risk statements," Redican said.
In 2006, the Food and Drug Administration approved Gardasil, a vaccine developed by Merck to fight the most virulent strains of HPV. Unfortunately, the vaccine must be administered when people are as young as 11 or 12 years old, before they become sexually active. This has created a tremendous amount of controversy among parents who believe that this may cause their children to be more promiscuous.
"In the past, people would think of this behavior as being safe," Redican said. "But now, it's been demonstrated that there is the potential risk for cancer."
Oral sex has often been considered to be a relatively harmless alternative to intercourse. But while 20 million people in America are currently infected with HPV and 6.2 million acquire a new infection every year, according to CDC, many may now think twice before engaging in oral sex.
"My sense is, once this information becomes more mainstream, and as it disseminates from journal article to health department statements, I think you will find people responding," Redican said.