Before You Suck: The Oral sex - Cancer Link

It is an open secret: more couples are partaking in oral sex. That is both fellatio and cunnilingus, which is where couples orally stimulate each other’s erotic zones. Its dope and already its being described as the new "good night kiss."

Oral sex has come to be popular with those that don’t want to risk getting pregnant; those that have premature ejaculation issues also try to use cunnilingus to help their partners get an orgasm – at least. Some are just copycats of Hollywood.

At least 54 percent of teenage girls in America are reported to have had oral sex and the trends keep going up with each new poll. In Malawi, in the university corridors and the middle class neighbourhoods where youths almost behave like Americans, the picture is likely to be the same.

As oral sex becomes the new goodnight kiss, there is a gloomy picture coming into the horizon: people who partake in oral sex are almost nine times likely to get oropharyngeal cancer, that is cancer of the mouth or throat.

Time Magazine reported on a May 2007 Survey  by the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) which showed that men and women who reported having six or more oral-sex partners during their lifetime had a nearly ninefold increased risk of developing cancer of the tonsils or at the base of the tongue.

Dr Beatrice Mwagomba is the Program Manager for Non-Communicable Diseases & Mental Health in the Ministry of Health. I asked her if at all there is a cancer risk in oral sex.

“Yes, there is documented evidence on association between oral sex and cancer of the mouth or throat but not necessarily a cause-effect relationship.

“... [this happens] through the transmission [during oral sex] of a human papilloma virus (HPV) which is also strongly associated with cervical cancer and genital warts,” said Mwagomba in an email interview.

Now that is some serious bad news. What would modern sex be without oral sex?  How serious and widespread is this HPV anyway?

Well, The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention approximates that 80 percent of women in the U.S. have been exposed to the virus by age 50; an estimate that some researchers think is low. As for men, the figure is likely to be higher since they easily get infected by HPV.

Men’s Journal Magazine reported last year that rates of HPV-related throat cancer had risen 225 percent in the previous 16 years in the USA, with men suffering the most cases. Researchers pointed to the increasing popularity of oral sex as the cause if the rise.

The HPV was commonly known as the cause of cervical cancers, but with new studies, it appears men are as much at risk as women. There is a vaccine for HPV but it is not clear if the cervical cancer vaccine can be used on men too.

There is little one can do to prevent HPV infection, most carriers have no symptoms and once infected the body can purge the virus naturally if you are lucky, otherwise, behaviour change is the prevention.

Sex might not be the same again without oral sex but not all hope is lost if you are a black person: A 2009 study found that white men are almost nine times as likely as black men to suffer HPV-related oral cancers. That is a big enough excuse to go down on her tonight – if you are black!