Can­cers caused by HPV are still on the rise, even as aware­ness of the con­nec­tion is drop­ping: #AACR23

Aware­ness about can­cers caused by hu­man pa­pil­lo­mavirus (HPV) re­mains low among most peo­ple in the US — but it’s get­ting worse. Few­er peo­ple knew that HPV could cause cer­vi­cal, anal, oral, and pe­nile can­cers in 2020 com­pared to 2014, ac­cord­ing to a study pre­sent­ed at AACR in Or­lan­do this week.

The drop was most pro­nounced for cer­vi­cal can­cer. In 2020, 70.2% of peo­ple sur­veyed were aware HPV caus­es cer­vi­cal can­cer, down from 77.6% in 2014. Still, aware­ness fell across all three oth­er HPV-re­lat­ed can­cer types, in­clud­ing oral, which dropped to 29.5% from 31.2%, pe­nile can­cer at 28.4% and down from 30.3% and anal can­cer, which de­creased the least, at 27.4%, down from 27.9%, for the 2014 to 2020 study com­par­i­son.

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