A new
study has linked HPV or human papillomavirus to a third of all throat cancers,
indicating that the HPV vaccine may provide patients with protection both below
and above the belt.
The study, published in the
Journal of Clinical Oncology, began
by looking at a study encompassing 938 patients who had either head and neck,
oesophageal (gullet) or oropharyngeal cancers. These were compared with samples
from 1,599 control subjects, who didn't have any form of cancer.
The researchers found that 35 percent of those diagnosed
with throat cancer carried antibodies to E6, one of the key proteins associated
with HPV, writes the BBC.
The antibodies are capable of damaging the cell
protection system that helps prevent cancer from developing, and researchers
found that fewer than 1 percent of the cancer-free test subjects carried
them.
There was one trace of good news for HPV throat cancer
sufferers: they were more likely to survive than those who developed thraot
cancer due to other factors, such as drinking or smoking.
Eighty-four percent of
antibody carriers who also had cancer were alive five years after diagnosis,
compared with a 58 percent mortality rate for those without the antibody.
In another recent study conducted by the International
Agency for Research on Cancer, researchers in Costa Rica gave 7,400 women aged
18 to 25 either the HPV vaccine, or a vaccine against hepatitis A.
Four years later, they found that the women who had
recieved the HPV vaccine had 93 percent fewer HPV infections than those women
who had recieved the control, indicating that the vaccination is indeed highly
effective.
It's unkown if the vaccine could
produce similar oral protection benefitsin men, but it's likely. “The
results of our study demonstrated protection against oral HPV infection in
women," said leady study author Dr Rolando Herrero in an IARC press
release.
"If similar results are observed in men,
vaccination of boys may become an important public health measure in areas
where oropharyngeal and other HPV-related cancers are relatively common in
men."
“If the HPV vaccine can
also protect against oral HPV infections and cancers, then it could have a
broader potential protective effect, but we don’t have enough research yet to
tell us, said Sara Hiom, Cancer Research UK’s director of health information
to HealthCanal.
"At the moment we
know it protects against pre-cancerous changes in the cervix, vulva, vagina and
anus, as well as reducing the risk of genital warts. So it’s important to
reduce inequalities, and to aim for high uptake of the vaccine."
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