Anal tumors and anal cancers can have various causes of occuring. Generally anal cancer is caused by infections in the anal area. The main cause is still unknown. Most anal cancers seem to be linked to infection with the human papilloma virus (HPV). While HPV infection seems to be important in the development of anal cancer, the vast majority of people with HPV infections do not get anal cancer.The cause of anal cancer is normally unclear for any type of cancerous cell is never easy to detect till at a later stage. If there was a question raised as to a virus causing anal cancer then the answer would be that yes, there is a virus that causes anal cancer and it is called the human papilloma virus (HPV).There are many different types of HPV. Some types of HPV cause warts in the genital area but many others do not. Usually, if we are infected with HPV our body’s defense against infection, the immune system clears the virus within a few months. But, in some cases, our body fails to clear the virus. The virus can cause changes in the cells that line the anus. For a small number of people these changes may, over a number of years, lead to anal cancer.

Anal cancer is slightly more common in women than in men and is more common in gay men and in people with a higher than average number of sexual partners. HPV infection may be a factor in this. A study in the Nov. 6 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine reports there is “strong evidence” to indicate that anal cancers are sexually transmitted via the human papillomavirus. HPV is most commonly known as the virus which causes genital warts, and which can lead to cervical cancer in women. Generally speaking, cancer is not thought of as a disease that can be transmitted from one person to another. But a study by Danish and Swedish researchers found that 88 percent of 388 people with anal cancer (both men and women) also had HPV in their cancer tissue specimens. Control groups of more than 500 people who didn’t have cancer and 500 people who had rectal cancer showed no signs of HPV infection. Interestingly, while past studies have associated anal cancer with men having sex with men, only 15 percent of the men with anal cancer in this study reported having had “homosexual contact” with another man — the same percentage as women who reported having had “anal intercourse” with a man. But because no man without anal cancer reported “homosexual contact,” the researchers concluded that this evidence and a few other peculiarities (such as being unmarried, no history of hepatitis) “strongly support the idea that male homosexual contact is a risk factor for anal cancer.” (By contrast, of the women who had engaged in anal intercourse, 15 percent had anal cancer, 10 percent had no cancer and 6 percent had rectal cancer.) The investigators said they also found strong evidence to link “heterosexual promiscuity” to the likelihood of having anal cancer.  

Human body has been designed to work in a specific manner. Any kind of abnormality can cause it to malfunction and that is where humans make a mistake. All the abnormal or excessive sexual relationships especially the unsafe ones normally larger in number of cases like gays and homosexuals can cause virus to infect the human anal track. And there on the virus penetrates causing the cancer to develop.  

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