ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 13, 1996 TAG: 9608130038
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: health notes
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY
Last week, we ran a story about still another study on the link between a sexually transmitted virus and cervical cancer. "Cervical cancer is like VD" said the main headline. Beneath that, a smaller headline noted: "Straying husbands take cancer home."
These statements must have exploded in the households where a woman has cervical cancer. And one young female college student who was treated for cervical cancer when she was in her early teens said the headline brought her close to tears.
"It made me feel dirty," she said.
This year, about 300 Virginia women will learn they have cancer of the cervix. About 100 Virginia women already diagnosed with cervical cancer will die of it in 1996, according to statistics from the Roanoke Valley Chapter of the American Cancer Society.
To put cervical cancer in perspective: 4,500 Virginia women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, 7,400 Virginia men will learn they have prostate cancer and 930 Virginia men and women will suffer skin melanoma.
Cervical cancer is not huge among cancers. Nor is it "like" venereal disease, as a doctor said in the story we ran.
Eighty-five percent of cervical cancers are linked to a sexually transmitted virus, but other factors are also present in those cases, says an American Cancer Society expert. Fifteen percent of the cervical cancers are not related to the virus.
A pitfall of reporting on an issue study by study is that it can be misleading because it is only a slice of the total picture. Still, it's also important to tell the public what researchers are learning.
A 1990 study at Montefiore Medical Center in New York linked cigarette smoking and exposure to passive smoke as a factor in the development of cervical cancer. This past April, a National Cancer Institutes panel found smoking, oral contraceptives and sexually transmitted diseases other than HPV are also risk factors.
The essence of the study reported on last week was that cervical cancer may not be related to a woman's sexual activity, but to that of her husband or regular sexual partner.
Historically, cervical cancer has been linked to promiscuity in women because of the presence in each case of a human papillomavirus, HPV, that can be sexually transmitted.
Husbands who have a number of sexual partners can pick up the same viruses and bring them home, found the study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The study, done in Spain, said men contaminated with two types of HPV increase their wives' chances of getting cancer of the cervix.
"The study further confirms some observations made before - that promiscuity is not on the part of the woman," said Dr. Hugh Shingleton, national vice president for cancer detection and treatment with American Cancer Society. "It was observed years ago that men might carry it. This is sort of next verse of the same story."
The study is a good study, Shingleton said. But, he added, even in those cancers linked to papilloma viruses, "it is not even absolutely determined that the virus is the sole cause ...we believe that there are several causes sitting there together."
The best information for women to take away from all of this is that having cervical cancer should not create any moral baggage and that it can be easily detected through regular gynecological examinations and Pap smears.
Cervical cancer develops in stages and Pap smears can detect the abnormal, precancerous cells. Those cells then can be removed by freezing, burning or surgery and this generally will prevent the cancer, said Dr. Keerti Shah, who was part of the study in Spain.
Cervical cancer rates in the U.S. have declined since the 1970s, according to National Cancer Institutes statistics. In 1973, the cervical cancer rate was 14.2 per 100,000 American women. In 1991, the last year for which figures are available, the rate had dropped to 8.6 per 100,000.
Detected early, cervical cancer has a five-year survival rate of about 90 percent. At later stages, when the cancer has spread to distant sites, the five-year survival rate is 11.6 percent.
Cancer of the cervix is an "exceedingly complicated issue," Shingleton said. "It's one of things experts cannot agree on. Cancer is very complex; that's one reason there's not a cure yet."
You can reach Sandra Brown Kelly at (800) 981-3393 outside the Roanoke Valley, at 981-3393 or at biznews@roanoke.infi.net
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