Virus linked to deadly cancer rates in China

Medical researchers at a leading Australian university recently uncovered an alarming link between a common virus and the quadrupling of a string of deadly cancers in China, Xinhua news agency reported. The deadly Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) increases the risk of oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) in China by almost four-fold, according to research led by University of New South Wales (UNSW) academics. In addition to causing cervical, anal and genital cancers, HPV has more recently been found to cause head and neck cancers. OSCC is a cancer where a possible link with HPV has been postulated in the past, but not resolved. “The problem with OSCC is that there is no way to screen for it, so it is usually diagnosed quite late and has a very high mortality,” said the first author of the paper, Surabhi Liyanage, a PhD candidate with UNSW Medicine. OSCC is the most common of two types of...