cervial cancer – Oral Cancer News

HPV Related Cancers Increase in Men

Source: scientificamerican.comAuthor: Robin Lloyd A vaccine to protect against the most dangerous strains of human papillomavirus (HPV), which cause almost all cervical cancers, as well as many cases of other cancers and genital warts in both sexes, won the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration nearly nine years ago. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommends that all boys and girls aged 11 or 12 receive the shots. Vaccination campaigns, aimed largely at girls and women, have fallen short of expectations. By 2013 just over half of U.S. females aged 13 to 17 had received at least one dose of either the Gardasil or Cervarix vaccine. For males, that figure was a disappointing 35 percent. Now head and neck cancers associated with the virus are on the rise, leading some experts to recommend that a gender-neutral or male-centric approach might be more effective. HPV is the most prevalent sexually transmitted disease in the U.S. and worldwide, infecting just about all men and women at some point in their lives. Although most people clear the virus naturally, persistent infections with some strains can lead to cancer—usually cervical or oropharyngeal (affecting the back of the throat, tonsils and back of the tongue). HPV-associated cancers make up 3.3 percent of all cancer cases among women and 2 percent of all such cases among men annually in the latest available figures, yet the incidence of virally instigated oropharyngeal and anal cancers is increasing. Ohio State University medical oncologist and epidemiologist Maura [...]

Charlotte Parker2015-02-18T10:56:24-07:00February, 2015|Oral Cancer News|

FDA Approves Vaccine That Covers More HPV Strains

Source: webmd.comAuthor: E J Mundell, HealthDay Reporter WEDNESDAY, Dec. 10, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last Wednesday approved a new vaccine with expanded protection against the human papillomavirus (HPV), by far the leading cause of cervical and certain other cancers. The agency said that Gardasil 9 can shield users against nine strains of the virus, compared to the four strains covered by Gardasil, the Merck & Co. vaccine approved in 2006. Merck also makes Gardasil 9. "Gardasil 9 has the potential to prevent approximately 90 percent of cervical, vulvar, vaginal and anal cancers," the FDA said in an agency news release. "Vaccination is a critical public health measure for lowering the risk of most cervical, genital and anal cancers caused by HPV," Dr. Karen Midthun, director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in the release. "The approval of Gardasil 9 provides broader protection against HPV-related cancers." The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently recommends the HPV vaccine for boys and girls at age 11 or 12, so they are protected before being exposed to the sexually transmitted virus. One other HPV vaccine, Cervarix, was also approved by the FDA in 2009. Cervarix is made by GlaxoSmithKline and protects against two HPV strains strongly linked to cancer, HPV 16 and 18. According to the FDA, the approval of Gardasil 9 was based on a clinical trial involving more than 14,000 girls and women aged 16 to 26 who were not infected with HPV at [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-12-16T17:11:06-07:00December, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Nearly 6 Percent Of Lung Cancer Tissue Samples From Non-Smokers Show Signs That HPV May Have Triggered The Tumors

Article Date: 12 Apr 2013 - 1:00 PDT Source: Medical News Today A common virus known to cause cervical and head and neck cancers may also trigger some cases of lung cancer, according to new research presented by Fox Chase Cancer Center at the AACR Annual Meeting 2013. Examining tissue samples from lung cancer patients, the researchers found that nearly 6% showed signs they may have been driven by a strain of human papillomavirus (HPV) known to cause cancer. If HPV indeed plays a role in lung cancer in some patients, the next step is to better understand those tumors so they can be treated more effectively. "The ultimate goal," says study author Ranee Mehra, MD, attending physician in medical oncology at Fox Chase, "is to determine if we can target our therapies to the specific characteristics of these tumors." Studies from Asia have shown that lung tumors are frequently infected with HPV. The pattern makes sense, explains Mehra - the lungs are located very near the head and neck, which are known to be at risk of tumors upon exposure to some strains of HPV. To investigate, she and her colleagues examined 36 tissue samples from people diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer who had never smoked, part of the Fox Chase Cancer Center Biosample Repository. The reason they chose non-smokers, Mehra explains, is that smoking is a major cause of lung cancer - but in non-smokers, the explanation is often less obvious. The researchers found that 4 out [...]

Charlotte Parker2013-05-09T15:55:12-07:00May, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

The Oral Cancer Foundation Helps Sponsor HPV/Oral Cancer Study

Source: Jada.org An increase in the incidence and survival of oropharyngeal cancer in the United States since 1984 can be attributed to the human papilloma-virus (HPV) infection, say researchers in an article published online Oct. 3 in Journal of Clinical Oncology. The results of previous studies have shown that oropharyngeal cancers can be divided into two separate diseases with distinct causes: HPV-negative cancers, which are associated with tobacco and alcohol use; and HPV-positive cancers, which are linked to certain types of HPV, a sexually transmitted virus. Patients with HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancer tend to be younger than and to have better survival rates than patients with HPV-negative cancer. To determine HPV infection’s role, researchers led by Anil K. Chaturvedi, PhD, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md., tested for HPV infection 271 archived samples of cancerous oropharyngeal tissue collected between 1984 and 2004 at three population-based cancer registries located in Hawaii, Iowa and Los Angeles in the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Residual Tissue Repositories Program. By using a variety of molecular assays, researchers found that the proportion of oropharyngeal cancers that were HPV-positive—particularly among men—increased over time, from 16.3 percent for cancers diagnosed from 1984 to 1989 to 72.7 percent for cancers diagnosed from 2000 to 2004. They also found that the incidence of HPV-negative oropharyngeal cancers declined by 50 percent between 1988 and 2004, likely due to declines in smoking and tobacco use. According to senior author Maura Gillison, MD, PhD, a professor of [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-11-01T09:48:55-07:00November, 2011|OCF In The News, Oral Cancer News|