For three months, 30-year-old Phil* had the feeling that there was something at the back of his throat. “I had a scratchiness near my right tonsil,” he says. “It wasn’t painful, but it irritated me constantly.
“And if I’d smoked more than usual over an evening, it would get particularly irritating the next morning and I’d cough a lot to try to alleviate it.”
Looking into his throat in the mirror, Phil could see only a “bit of redness”.
“It was only when I went for a filling in a back tooth that my dentist picked up that there was something seriously wrong and sent me to an ear, nose and throat specialist.”
A biopsy sample from his throat was sent to a lab for testing, and a week later Phil was told the bad news. He had throat cancer.
“I was baffled at first, but then the doctor explained that I had contracted human papillomavirus (HPV), probably during oral sex, and that in some people it causes oropharyngeal (throat) cancer. It put me into a state of total anxiety,” says Phil.
HPV is a common sexually transmitted virus. Most strains do not lead to symptoms or health problems but some cause genital warts as well as cervical, penile, anal and other cancers.
Oropharyngeal cancer can affect the soft palate, base of the tongue, tonsils and pharynx (the part of the throat situated behind the mouth and nasal cavity).
It isn’t known why HPV leads to throat cancer, but researchers have found that HPV-related throat cancer is increasing worldwide, especially among men in their 20s and 30s. The risk increases the more oral sex they have.
Worldwide, 400 000 new cases of oral cancer are diagnosed every year. Of these, about 70 percent are HPV-related, according to an authoritative US study.
Researchers say that HPV-related oropharyngeal cancer will overtake HPV-related cervical cancer in the US by 2020.
There aren’t up-to-date statistics of HPV-related throat cancer in South Africa. The National Cancer Register’s latest figures are from the early 2000s and it lists naso-oropharynx cancer (all nose and throat cancers) as the 11th most common cancer for males, and the 18th most common cancer for females .
Experts agree that the prevalence of oral cancer is rapidly increasing in poorer communities, where STDs are common and oral health is poor.
“Oral cancer is the sixth most common cancer in most countries, and we believe that, by now, it will be at least sixth in South Africa, if not higher up the list,” says Professor André van Zyl of the University of Pretoria’s (UP) School of Dentistry.
As human papillomaviruses spread from skin to skin and during unprotected oral or anal sex, the conditions are ideal for transmission from one person to another, Van Zyl explains.
In the case of HPV, you only get it in the location it attaches to. It doesn’t travel through the bloodstream.
Source: IOL
