Mouth cancer on the rise

Well, this sucks.

Oral cancer rates “have more than doubled in a generation,” according to a new awareness campaign by the Britbased nonprofit Oral Health Foundation.

Over the past 20 years, mouth cancer diagnoses have skyrocketed 135 percent in the UK. In 2018 alone, seven people died every day from the disease out of 8,337 patients in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

US rates are comparable: According to the Oral Cancer Foundation, there are about 54,000 Americans diagnosed with oral or oropharyngeal cancer (including the larynx) every year, causing approximately 13,500 deaths per year.

The hygiene advocacy group warned people to be aware of the causes of mouth cancer — primarily the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV), drinking alcohol and smoking.

Dr. Nigel Carter, chief executive of the OHF, told the Daily Mail, “While most cancers are on the decrease, cases of mouth cancer continue to rise at an alarming rate.”

He added that HPV is considered an “emerging risk factor” compared with “traditional” causes like smoking and boozing.

According to the CDC, HPV causes an estimated 70 percent of oropharyngeal mouth cancers.

It’s not the first highprofile way the sexually transmitted infection has been linked to cancer.

Actor Michael Douglas, 75, infamously blamed his throat cancer diagnosis on his fondness for oral sex. (Though the actor and husband of Catherine ZetaJones, 50, later backpedaled on that claim.)

Beyond sex, having more than 10 alcoholic drinks per week is linked to approximately 33 percent of diagnoses, the OHF reports. Smoking is tied to about 17 percent of cases, while increasing your individual risk of disease by 91 percent.

Those who live with oral cancer could have to do so without a tongue or jaw.

Carter calls it a “devastating” disease: “It changes how somebody speaks, it makes eating and drinking more difficult and often changes a person’s physical appearance.”