Hi folks,

I'm a new member, and think this is a great site. It has been very informative. I had a recent scare with my father in Hawaii. He had some symptoms similiar to nasopharyngeal cancer, and I began researching symptoms and advice online. I found my way to this board. Luckily, what he had turned out to be a broken blood vessel in his nostril.

I'm still very much interested in oral cancers. My wife was diagnosed with high risk HPV, and i'm aware of the apparent link to tonsillar and back of throat risks. It seems lately, though, that HPV is trying to be implicated in nearly every kind of cancer. I've read many studies that have tried to implicate it in lung cancer (????) and even breast cancer! I had my own scare recently when I thought I had penile cancer! So far, it seems as if HPV causes cervical cancer, and may cause oralpharyngeal cancer, throat cancer, penile cancer, anal cancer, skin cancer, lung cancer, and breast cancer. Do you guys think this HPV scare is the latest sensationalism in medical media, or what? Here's my rationale:

I've read Dr. Palefsky's presentation on HPV and anal dysplasia at UCSF. He claims, based on his sampling and statistics, that half the population has HPV, and a quarter has the high risk variants. Now, let's restrict this to the age group of 18 and up. This means that nearly 220 million * .5 = 110 million have HPV, and 55 million people have the high risk types. Being that the population is static, and people die and are born every year, that 55 million doesn't change much due to infection rates being static. Based on current CDC #'s, there are about 33,000 oral cancer patients (not including laryngeal) every year. So, the overall yearly risk is 0.06%. Supposedly, an estimated 11,000 of those cancer patients (based on the Johns Hopkins press release) is due to HPV. So your overall yearly risk is even lower, at 0.02%. Now, let's assume that the cancer mostly afflicts people in their 50's and up (based on the latest cancer stats, the risk of developing cancer skyrockets at 50). Based on the age distribution, that's 37% of 301 million people = 111.37 million. Assuming the same HPV distribution as before, that's 27.843 million. Your risk in this age group is now .119%. If you assume that a third of oral cancer is caused by HPV, then your yearly risk in this high risk age group is 0.04%. I believe your cumulative lifetime risk is much higher, but less than 1%. It makes me wonder, is HPV related oral cancer that big?

Okay, there's one thing I neglected, and that's oral sex. We're assuming that everyone has had it in this risk group--which is obviously not the case. But, the strongest link based on the Johns Hopkins report was not on oral sex partners, but on HPV 16 serological antibodies. So, therefore, it might be wiser to restrict the population to only HPV 16 infected folks vs. all high risk types to make the logic stick.

Any thoughts?