(Reuters Health) - People with hepatitis C may have at least twice the risk of developing certain head and neck cancers as individuals who don't carry the virus, a U.S. study suggests.
While the hepatitis C virus (HCV) has long been linked to other cancers, the findings are among the first to link it to cancers in the head and neck, researchers note in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Dr. Harrys Torres of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and colleagues analyzed data on almost 35,000 patients tested for the virus from 2004 to 2014, a group that included 409 people with head and neck malignancies.
Overall, 20 percent of people with oropharyngeal cancers had HCV. So did 14 percent of people with non-oropharyngeal head and neck cancers.
Because smoking is a major risk factor for head and neck cancers, researchers also looked at data for a control group of 694 people with lung tumors and other smoking-related malignancies. They found 6.5 percent of this control group had HCV.
Compared with patients in the control group, the researchers found the risk for HCV-infected patients of developing head and neck cancers was increased: 2.4 times higher for oral cavity cancers, 2 times greater for oropharynx cancers and almost 5 times for larynx cancers.
One limitation of the study is the lack of a control group of cancer-free patients, the authors note. The findings also don't prove that HCV directly causes head and neck tumors.
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