herd immunity – Oral Cancer News

Throat cancer is becoming an epidemic, and sex could be why

Source: www.sciencealert.com Author: Hisham Mehanna, Professor, Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, University of Birmingham Over the past two decades, there has been a rapid increase in throat cancer in the west, to the extent that some have called it an epidemic. This has been due to a large rise in a specific type of throat cancer called oropharyngeal cancer (the area of the tonsils and back of the throat). The main cause of this cancer is the human papillomavirus (HPV), which are also the main cause of cancer of the cervix. Oropharyngeal cancer has now become more common than cervical cancer in the US and the UK. HPV is sexually transmitted. For oropharyngeal cancer, the main risk factor is the number of lifetime sexual partners, especially oral sex. Those with six or more lifetime oral-sex partners are 8.5 times more likely to develop oropharyngeal cancer than those who do not practice oral sex. Behavioral trends studies show that oral sex is very prevalent in some countries. In a study that my colleagues and I conducted in almost 1,000 people having tonsillectomy for non-cancer reasons in the UK, 80 percent of adults reported practicing oral sex at some point in their lives. Yet, mercifully, only a small number of those people develop oropharyngeal cancer. Why that is, is not clear. The prevailing theory is that most of us catch HPV infections and are able to clear them completely. However, a small number of people are not able to get rid [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-09-15T06:24:29-07:00September, 2023|Oral Cancer News|

HPV vaccination could be offered to schoolboys to decrease risk of cancer

Source: www.mirror.co.uk Author: Andrew Gregory A vaccination could soon be offered to every schoolboy to help tackle the rising rate of some cancers in men, a Government minister revealed on Thursday. Health chiefs are poised to drop their opposition to extending the jab to protect against the human papilloma virus (HPV), which is already given to all Year 8 girls. The likely move follows growing alarm over cancers of the mouth, throat, neck and head, as well as penile and anal cancer, amid growing evidence that they are caused by HPV. The NHS (National Health Service) spends more than £300m a year treating head and neck cancers, while giving the vaccine to all boys would cost just £22m, supporters say. Health Minister Jane Ellison has revealed that the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI) is investigating the change, with its verdict due early next year. Mrs Ellison - who has previously described giving the HPV jab to girls only as "a little odd" - said: "I understand the wish for it to be available to all adolescents regardless of gender. "The JCVI is reconsidering its initial advice on this and modeling is under way to inform its consideration. We will look at that as a priority when we get it. "I recognize the frustration that people have expressed and I have talked personally to Public Health England officials who are involved in the modelling work." The minister said money was already available to extend the vaccination program if [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2016-06-26T08:27:30-07:00June, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

Professor Harald zur Hausen: Nobel scientist calls for HPV vaccination for boys

Source: www.independent.co.ukAuthor: Charlie Cooper & Gloria Nakajubi The UK should vaccinate all boys against the cancer-causing human papilloma virus (HPV), the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who discovered the link between HPV and cancer has said. Professor Harald zur Hausen, the German virologist whose theory that HPV could be a cause of cervical cancers led to global efforts to vaccinate girls against the virus, said that boys should also be protected. There is now a wealth of evidence that HPV also causes cancers in men, including anal, penile and throat cancer. Professor zur Hausen added that there was now a chance to “eradicate” HPV viruses altogether if the world developed global vaccination programmes for all children. Since 2008 the UK has offered free vaccinations against HPV to girls aged 12 to 13 – a programme that had an almost 87 per cent uptake from 2013 to 2014 and has led to falls in the number of pre-cancerous abnormalities of the cervix, according to research carried out among vaccinated girls in Scotland. Vaccine authorities in the UK, traditionally an international leader in the field of immunisation, are yet to make a judgement on a publicly funded vaccination programme for boys, which would follow in the wake of those already in place in Australia, Austria, Israel and parts of Canada. HPV is the name for a common group of viruses that can affect the moist membranes of the cervix, anus, mouth and throat. It is usually spread through sexual contact. Most sexually active people [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2015-07-13T17:09:58-07:00July, 2015|Oral Cancer News|

Vaccine is credited with steep fall of HPV in teenagers.

Source The New York TimesBy SABRINA TAVERNISEPublished: June 19, 2013 342 Comments The prevalence of dangerous strains of the human papillomavirus — the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States and a principal cause of cervical cancer — has dropped by half among teenage girls in recent years, a striking measure of success for a vaccine against the virus that was introduced only in 2006, federal health officials said on Wednesday. Dr. Judith L. Schaechter gives an HPVvaccination to a 13-year-old girl in heroffice at the University of Miami LeonardM. Miller School of Medicine. The sharp decline in the infection rate comes at a time of deepening worry among doctors and public health officials about the limited use of the HPV vaccine in the United States. Health departments across the country are scrambling for ways to increase vaccination rates, while nonprofit groups are using postcard reminders and social media campaigns and pediatricians are being encouraged to convince families of the vaccine’s benefits. There are some signs that resistance to the vaccine may be growing. A study published in the journal Pediatrics in March found that 44 percent of parents in 2010 said they did not intend to vaccinate their daughters, up from 40 percent in 2008. Because it prevents a sexually transmitted infection, the vaccine comes with a stigma. Some parents worry it promotes promiscuity. And it has been controversial. During the Republican primary in 2011, Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, said the vaccine could have [...]

Charlotte Parker2013-06-20T11:31:05-07:00June, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

Dose of reality: HPV is epidemic, which is odd since it is largely preventable

Source: www.sciencenews.org Author: Nathan Seppa There are two vaccines that guard against human papillomavirus, and they are in rare company among medical inventions — the vaccines prevent cancer. Only the hepatitis B vaccine can make the same claim. Cancer-causing HPV can trigger abnormal cell growth on the cervix, and cervical cancer still kills up to 4,000 U.S. women each year. The virus is also implicated in cancers occurring in the anus and the throat. All told, according to a 2011 study, 29 percent of sexually active U.S. girls and women carry a potentially cancer-causing HPV infection. Preteen and adolescent girls and boys are priority groups for vaccines that prevent human papillomavirus infection.© Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters/Corbis Back in 2006 and 2009, when the HPV vaccines Gardasil and Cervarix came onto the market, health officials dreamed of halting the spread of HPV, which is sexually transmitted, in a single generation. Scientists call such blanket coverage herd immunity — in which a pathogen gets vaccinated into oblivion, becoming so rare that even unvaccinated people are protected. With such heady potential, Gardasil, developed by Merck, and Cervarix, created by GlaxoSmithKline, should be an easy sell. They rev up a potent immunity against HPV 16 and 18, the two types of the virus that account for most cases of cervical cancer. Gardasil also prevents most genital warts. The immunity the vaccines provide is many-fold better than the weak protection engendered by a run-in with the virus itself, and since approval, both vaccines have proven [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2013-04-24T12:59:51-07:00April, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

HPV vaccination of young women may protect men through herd immunity

Source: www.medscape.com Author: Laurie Barclay, MD High coverage of quadrivalent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination in young Australian women resulted in a lower frequency of genital warts, which might protect heterosexual men through herd immunity, according to the results of an analysis of national sentinel surveillance data published online November 9 in Lancet Infectious Diseases. "The natural history of cervical and HPV-associated diseases is slow," Mark H. Einstein, MD, MS, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and women's health, and director of clinical research for women's health and gynecologic oncology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Albert Einstein Cancer Center, Montefiore Medical Center, in New York City, told Medscape Medical News when asked for independent comment. "This is the first registry-based study that has already shown the declines after vaccinating a large population of vaccine-eligible adolescents and young adults. This prospectively shows what all the models have been predicting all along." The annual incidence of genital warts has been increasing for decades and is currently about 1% in young, sexually active people. Up to 90% of cases of genital warts are caused by HPV types 6 and 11, which are 2 of the 4 types targeted by the quadrivalent HPV vaccine used in Australia (Gardasil; CSL Biotherapies). "While it will probably be as effective as the quadrivalent HPV vaccine at preventing anogenital and other cancers, the bivalent HPV vaccine (Cervarix, GSK) used in the UK national program provides no protection against genital warts," lead author Basil Donovan, MD, head of [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-11-21T12:53:34-07:00November, 2010|Oral Cancer News|