A new study has shown that people who have gone down on more than five partners in their lifetime are at a 250% greater chance to develop throat cancer, most likely because of the human papillomavirus (HPV), the same little bastard family of viruses that cause genital warts.

After controlling for other risk factors for throat cancer, such as drinking and smoking, the analysis revealed that people who had prior infection with HPV were 32 times as likely to have this cancer as those with no evidence of ever having the virus. And those who tested positive for a particularly aggressive strain of the virus, called HPV-16, were 58 times more likely to have throat cancer.

By comparison, either smoking or drinking increases the risk of such cancer by about threefold.

A vaccine against several strains of HPV that cause cervical cancer is currently available, but no one is yet sure if it will help protect against the increased potential for throat cancer. (They’re not yet sure if it’s really HPV that’s causing the throat cancer, although it seems likely.)

The lesson? Always receive, never give.

Oral sex can cause throat cancer [New Scientist]