Extracts from a bioengineered chewing gum reduced HPV levels by 93% in saliva samples and 80% in oral rinse samples taken from patients with head and neck cancer, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine.
The work is preclinical. No person chewed the gum as a treatment in this study. Researchers took samples from patients, treated those samples with gum extracts in the laboratory, and measured what happened to the microbes in them. That design cannot tell anyone whether chewing this gum would prevent or treat cancer, and the researchers do not claim it does.
The reason the finding is worth attention anyway is that persistent oral infection with high-risk HPV is associated with increased risk of cancers of the oropharynx, the middle part of the throat including the tonsils and base of the tongue, and there is currently no treatment aimed at clearing an established oral HPV infection.
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