The New Sex Cancer
Unfortunately that`s not the case thanks to what many people refer to as the new `sex cancer`. Awhile back we did a blog on the rise of the human papilloma virus and its risks to women. Now there are newer studies exposing the risk HPV poses to men. Screening is a challenge for several reasons. In women it can be detected through their annual gynecological exams. As of right now there is no reliable oral detection and no way to test men meaning that they could walk around with it for years unknowingly transmitting it to their partners. This is why most doctors say it's pointless for people in monogamous relationships to change their sexual habits in the aftermath of an HPV-positive determination. Chances are that both partners have already been exposed.
HPV is so easily transmitted because of the fact that it is so difficult to detect. In 99 percent of cases, the disease is symptom-free. (The remaining 1 percent present as bumpy, cauliflower-like warts on the penis or groin area in men and in and around the vagina in women.) Most people infected with HPV have no idea they have it, from which person they've contracted it from, or that they could be infecting others. Though there are hundreds of strains of this virus the HPV-16, a high risk strain known to cause cervical cancer in women, has made patients 32 times as likely to develop oropharyngeal cancer. This means that HPV has now replaced alcohol and smoking as the number one cause of oral cancer.
Human beings recent loss of inhibitions regarding oral sex combined with the fact that HPV is a locally invasive virus, prove that contacting it through direct contact is very likely. There are studies showing that by simply kissing someone with oral HPV you can infect someone, but it`s not yet been determined whether its transmittable through saliva.
Gentlemen, your best line of defense is your dentist; they know their way around abnormalities in the mouth better than anyone else and can easily detect the white or reddish dots on the back of your tongue cause by HPV. Considering only 1.5% of women are known to be carrying HPV-16, for most of the population HPV clears out on its own. But why take the risk when an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of protection.