Actress Farrah Fawcett's battle with anal cancer, featured last week in a television special, has brought the rare disease into the national spotlight. According the National Cancer Institute, there were an estimated 5,000 new cases of anal cancer in 2008. The number of new colon cancer cases was 106,100 for the same year. While the details of Fawcett's case are not known, Dr. Petr Hausner, an oncologist at the University of Maryland Greenebaum Cancer Center who specializes in gastrointestinal and thoracic cancers, offers five things people should know about the disease:
* Anal cancer is a rare cancer. Many cases are linked to infection with a certain type of human papilloma virus (HPV). It can also be caused through unprotected anal intercourse, in particular with a person who has genital warts. However, not all people who have HPV will develop anal cancer.
* In 2008, Harald zur Hausen won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his discovery of the link between certain variants of HPV and cervical cancer, which led to the creation of HPV vaccines. The same type of HPV virus that causes cervical cancer in women can cause anal cancer in women and men, thus HPV vaccination might protect from cervical and anal cancer.
