A newly published medical research has found that oral sex has become the leading cause of throat cancer, even reaching “epidemic” level in the UK and the U.S.

The research was conducted by Dr Hisham Mehanna of the University of Birmingham and published on April 25.

The report noted that “there has been a rapid increase in throat cancer in the West” in the last two decades.

“The prevailing theory is that most of us catch HPV infections and are able to clear them completely,” Mr Mehanna writes.

“However, a small number of people are not able to get rid of the infection, maybe due to a defect in a particular aspect of their immune system. In those patients, the virus is able to replicate continuously, and over time integrates at random positions into the host’s DNA, some of which can cause the host cells to become cancerous.”

People with “six or more lifetime oral-sex partners are 8.5 times more likely to develop oropharyngeal cancer than those who do not practise oral sex,” the report detailed.

Although over 80 per cent of adults reported practising oral sex at some point in their lives, “only a small number of those people develop oropharyngeal cancer,” the report stated.

It was also found that oral cancer has become more common than cervical cancer. Oral sex is now a bigger risk factor, more than smoking alcohol consumption, and an unhealthy diet, which is due to one particular type of throat cancer – oropharyngeal cancer – which affects the area of the tonsils and back of the throat and is due to the human papillomavirus (HPV) which is also the main cause of cancer of the cervix.

The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) also revealed that around 8,300 people are diagnosed with throat cancer every year in the UK. This is about one in every 50 cancers reported. 

More than two in three cases of mouth cancer develop in adults over the age of 55. Only one in eight (12.5 per cent) happens in people younger than 50.