New Thoughts And Updates On Risk Factors For Cervical Cancer
Cervical cancer is undisputedly linked to one or two subtypes of human papilloma viruses (HPV-18 or HPV-16). However, infections of human herpes virus-2 (HSV-2) and the bacterium Chlamydia or behaviors such as smoking, drug use or promiscuous sex life play accessory roles in the development cervical cancer.
Early reports, up until about 2002, suggested that HSV-2 or Chlamydia caused cervical cancer because so many women who developed the disease were infected with either or both of these pathogens. Now it appears that such sexually transmitted infections, if they have an impact at all, may be indirectly important by causing inflammation in cervical cells and nudging them toward developing cancer when HPV is already present.
Smoking, drug addiction and oral contraceptive use are other risk factors that have been previously linked to cervical cancer. However, a 2008 report from researchers at Turku University Hospital in Finland looked at nearly 2,000 women from Latin America and Eastern Europe and found that smoking or drug use themselves did not increase the risk for early or late stage cervical cancer. Use of contraceptives was also not a direct factor.
