London - Hollywood star Michael Douglas has told how his life-threatening cancer was a direct result of his sex life.
In a candid confession the 68-year-old said he was told his throat cancer was triggered after he contracted HPV, the human papillomavirus, the most common sexually transmitted infection.
The virus can be contracted through oral sex.
Medical experts have said the HPV virus is responsible for as much as 40 percent of all mouth cancers, particularly in those aged from 40 to 60 years of age.
There are more than 40 types of HPV but only a small number are known to cause cancer. It is known mostly to affect genital areas and is passed on by direct skin contact.
Mahesh Kumar, a consultant surgeon at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, north-west London, said over the past decade there has been a sharp rise in oral cancer caused by HPV, particularly among younger sufferers. A recent study of 1,316 patients with oral cancer found that 57 percent of them were HPV-16 positive.
Mr Kumar said: ‘It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that the HPV type 16 is the causative agent in oropharyngeal [throat] cancer.’
Mr Kumar said he doubted that Douglas’s cancer was caused solely by HPV.
It had been widely thought Douglas’s years of drinking and smoking were to blame for the advanced cancer which was first diagnosed in 2010.
Asked whether he now regretted smoking and drinking, he replied: “No. Because without wanting to get too specific, this particular cancer is caused by HPV.”
Around the time he was diagnosed with cancer, his eldest son Cameron was jailed on drugs charges in New York.
Douglas admitted he thought the stress of his son’s imprisonment could have caused the cancer, but told the Guardian newspaper: “It’s a sexually transmitted disease that causes cancer.”
The double Oscar-winning actor has been married to Welsh star Catherine Zeta-Jones, 43, since 2000.
In the early 1990s he was reported to have been treated for sex addiction after his then wife Diandra caught him in bed with her best friend.
Douglas is alleged to have stood before a group of other addicts and confessed to being unable to control his urges to have sex.
At the time of his spell in rehab he was the star of the erotic thriller Basic Instinct which featured graphic sex scenes with co-star Sharon Stone.
Douglas later claimed he was in rehab for alcohol abuse and denied he was ever a sex addict. He was diagnosed with cancer in August 2010.
A series of specialists in the US missed the tumour growing on his tongue and he was prescribed antibiotics.
It was only after he visited a friend’s doctor in Canada that the walnut-sized tumour was found.He was then put on an eight-week course of chemotherapy and radiation.
He lost over 20kg in weight but the treatment was successful and he has been cancer-free for two years.
He marked his return to acting by starring as the gay showman Liberace in a movie about his life called Behind the Candelabra, which was recently screened at the Cannes Film Festival. - Daily Mail