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Oral sex can cause mouth cancer: Study
Reuters
London, February 25: Although the risk is small and it is more likely to result from heavy drinking and smoking, scientists have uncovered evidence that oral sex can cause mouth cancer.
Researchers had suspected that a sexually transmitted infection that is linked to cervical cancer could also be associated with tumours in the mouth.
Now a study by researchers working for the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France seems to have confirmed it. "Oral sex can lead to oral tumours," New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday, referring to the latest research.
The scientists studied more than 1,600 patients from Europe, Canada, Australia, Cuba and the Sudan with oral cancer and more than 1,700 healthy people. They found that patients with oral cancer containing a strain of the human papilloma virus (HPV) known as HPV16 were three times more likely to report having had oral sex than those without the virus strain.
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