HPV tied to throat cancers: study
A sexually transmitted infection is also tied to risk of cancer of the vocal cords, says study.
A sexually transmitted infection usually thought of in connection to cervical cancer is also tied to a five-times greater risk of cancer of the vocal cords or voice box, according to a Chinese study.
Chinese researchers combined the results of 55 studies from the past two decades and found that 28 percent of people with laryngeal cancers had cancerous tissue that tested positive for human papilloma virus (HPV). But that rate varied widely by study, from no throat cancer patients with HPV to 79 percent with the infection.
"HPV infection, especially high-risk type HPV-16, was found to be significantly associated with the risk of laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma," wrote Xiangwei Li, from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking University Medical College, the lead researcher.
Along with their larger review, the researchers analyzed 12 studies that compared cancerous and non-cancerous tissues from a total of 630 patients. They found the cancerous throat tissue had 5.4 times the odds of testing positive for HPV infection, compared to the non-cancerous tissue.
"We re finding that HPV appears to be linked to a number of squamous cell carcinomas of the head, neck and throat," said William Mendenhall, a radiation oncologist from the University of Florida in Gainesville who didn t take part in the study.
"I think the risk of HPV on laryngeal cancer is probably relatively low," he added. "Most of the patients we see currently that come in with laryngeal cancer have a strong history of cigarette smoking, also heavy drinking."
Along with tobacco and alcohol, having a poor diet and exposure to certain chemicals can increase a person s risk of laryngeal and other head and neck cancers.
The American Cancer Society estimates 12.360 people will be diagnosed with laryngeal cancer in the United States in 2012 and there will be 3,650 deaths from the disease.
Mendenhall said that of all head and neck cancers, HPV seems to play the biggest role not in laryngeal cancer, but in cancer of the tonsils and back of the tongue.
"The exposure is probably decades earlier. Someone who develops a base of tongue cancer when they re 50, they probably were exposed to the virus years before, in their teens or 20s."
At least half of sexually-active people get HPV at some point in their lives, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but the virus is usually cleared by the immune system. Only some of the 40-plus HPV strains have been tied to cancer.
Based on the current findings, it s difficult to know how many of the laryngeal cancers in the original studies were actually caused by the virus, researchers said.
