In a new study from Portugal, UK, Spain, and the U.S., researchers found that people who are exposed to secondhand smoke could have a 51% higher risk of developing oral cancer.
Oral cancers—lip, oral cavity and oropharynx cancers—account for 447,751 new cases of cancer and 228,389 deaths every year globally.
Big risk factors for these forms of cancer include tobacco smoking and use of smokeless tobacco, consumption of alcohol, and betel quid chewing.
Tobacco smoke forms the largest exposure of humans to chemical carcinogens and it causes one out of five cancer-related deaths in the world.
However, it is not only active smokers affected as, according to data from 192 countries, 33% of male non-smokers, 35% of female non-smokers and 40% of children were exposed to involuntary smoking during one year by inhaling secondhand tobacco smoke.
Although tobacco smoking is a known cause of oral cancer, it has not yet been established whether or not secondhand smoke also causes oral cancer.
In the study, the team analyzed five existing relevant studies involving 6,977 people collectively of whom 3,452 were exposed to secondhand smoke and 3,525 were not.
They showed that people who were exposed to secondhand smoke had a 51% higher risk of developing oral cancer.
In addition, the duration of exposure of more than 10 or 15 years increased the risk of oral cancer to more than twice compared with non-exposed individuals.
The team acknowledged that their analysis only involved a small number of studies, but that several of the original studies had already pooled many individual studies so the overall number of cases and controls for the new meta-analyses was high.
The study supports a causal association between secondhand smoke exposure and oral cancer. Moreover, the analyses of exposure-response, including by duration of exposure (more than 10 or 15 years) to secondhand smoke, further support causal inference.”
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The study is published in Tobacco Control.
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