Gum disease and other dental ailments boost the risk of becoming infected with oral human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted virus that causes 40 to 80 percent of all throat cancers, according to the first study to find such a link.
Those who said they had poor oral health had a 56 percent higher rate of oral HPV infection than those who reported good to excellent oral health, researchers wrote in a study published today by Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
