HPV-related throat cancers are on the rise.
Throat cancers caused by a virus transmitted during oral sex have increased significantly in the United States in recent years, researchers reported on Monday.
The virus is the same one that causes many cases of cervical cancer: human papillomavirus (HPV) Type 16.
Researchers tested tumor samples from 271 patients with certain types of throat cancer diagnosed from 1984 to 2004. The virus was found in only 16 percent of the samples from the 1980s — but in 72 percent of those collected after 2000.
The researchers estimated that over all, throat cancers caused by the virus have increased to 2.6 per 100,000 people in 2004 from 0.8 cases per 100,000 people in 1988. If the trend continues, by 2020 the virus will be causing more throat cancer than cervical cancer, the study concluded.
Really cool, also, that there’s a vaccine that might prevenet this, and Republican presidential candidates are trying to scare people out of getting it.
And one of the most popular contraceptives in Africa may be increasing the risk of HIV transmission.
The most popular contraceptive for women in eastern and southern Africa, a hormone shot given every three months, appears to double the risk the women will become infected with H.I.V., according to a large study published Monday. And when it is used by H.I.V.-positive women, their male partners are twice as likely to become infected than if the women had used no contraception.
The findings potentially present an alarming quandary for women in Africa. Hundreds of thousands of them suffer injuries, bleeding, infections and even death in childbirth from unintended pregnancies. Finding affordable and convenient contraceptives is a pressing goal for international health authorities.
But many countries where pregnancy rates are highest are also ravaged by H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. So the evidence suggesting that the injectable contraceptive has biological properties that may make women and men more vulnerable to H.I.V. infection is particularly troubling.
Injectable hormones are very popular. About 12 million women between the ages of 15 and 49 in sub-Saharan Africa, roughly 6 percent of all women in that age group, use them. In the United States, it is 1.2 million, or 3 percent of women using contraception. While the study involved only African women, scientists said biological effects would probably be the same for all women. But they emphasized that concern was greatest in Africa because the risk of H.I.V. transmission from heterosexual sex was so much higher there than elsewhere.