• Posted September 12, 2025

Cervical Cancer Survivors Have Higher Risk of Another Type Of Cancer

Women who overcome cervical cancer might have another potentially life-threatening health crisis on their horizon, researchers say.

Cervical cancer survivors have nearly double the risk of developing anal cancers compared to the general population, researchers reported Sept. 11 in JAMA Network Open.

And their risk increases as they grow older, and as time passes since their cervical cancer treatment, results show.

Both types of cancer are linked to infection with human papillomavirus (HPV), researchers noted. The virus is mainly spread during intimate contact.

“We’ve known for a long time that both cervical and anal cancers are caused by HPV, the human papillomavirus,” senior researcher Ashish Deshmukh said in a news release. He’s the co-director of the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Program at the Medical University of South Carolina Hollings Cancer Center in Charleston.

“But what hasn’t been well-understood is how that shared risk might connect the two diseases over a woman’s lifetime,” Deshmukh said.

For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 85,000 U.S. women diagnosed with cervical cancer, tracking them over two decades to see how many went on to develop anal cancer.

Results showed that anal cancer rates among cervical cancer survivors increased with age and over time, with the most cases occurring among women 65 to 74 more than 15 years out from their original diagnosis.

In women in that age group, the rate of anal cancers is so high that it qualifies them for routine screening as high-risk patients, researchers said.

Currently, anal cancer screening is recommended only for certain high-risk groups, including people living with HIV, organ transplant recipients and women who’ve had cancer of the vulva, researchers noted.

“Our study shows that the risk doesn’t go away – it actually increases with age and over time,” lead researcher Haluk Damgacioglu, an assistant professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, said in a news release.

That’s because HPV-related cancers can take years, and sometimes decades, to develop, researchers said.

“It’s a slow process, and that’s part of why it’s been so hard to detect," Deshmukh said. "By the time symptoms show up, the cancer is often advanced.”

Anal cancer screening is not as routine as screening for other cancers, but reliable methods do exist, researchers said. 

“These results tell us that women who had cervical cancer years ago should be considered for routine anal cancer screening,” Damgacioglu said. “Right now, that’s not happening.”

The team now is working on a project to determine when and how often screening should occur among cervical cancer survivors.

“We don’t have the resources to screen everyone,” Deshmukh said. “But we can use these data to be strategic. Screening based on risk ensures we help the people who need it most.”

Damgacioglu said there is one aim.

“This is about helping long-term cancer survivors protect their health,” he said. “They’ve already fought one cancer – we want to help prevent a second.”

More information

The American Cancer Society has more about anal cancer.

SOURCE: Medical University of South Carolina, news release, Sept. 11, 2025