London: According to a recent study, women, who have had lots of sexual partners, are less likely to get oral cancer.
The cancers are linked to the human papillomavirus, or HPV, one of the most common sexually transmitted infections, the Mirror reported.
Researchers told the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting that they also found men were twice as likely to develop the disease.
For men, the risk of HPV-driven cancers of the head and neck rise along with the number of oral sex partners, researchers said.
Johns Hopkins University's Gypsyamber D'Souza said middle aged white men are at particularly high risk compared to other races.
She said the research shows that for men, the number of oral sex partners - as that number increases, the risk of an oral HPV infection increases, but with women, the number of sexual partners does not appear to raise the risk.
She added that comparing men and women with the same number of sexual partners, a man is much more likely to become infected with oral HPV than a woman.
