By Kristen Hallam & Makiko Kitamura, Bloomberg

Michael Douglas’s claim that oral sex led to his throat cancer is spurring calls to vaccinate more boys as well as girls against the human papilloma virus that causes the malignancy.

Cancers caused by HPV rose in the past decade in the U.S., where use of the vaccines remained low. Only a third of American girls ages 13 to 17 were fully vaccinated as of 2010, well below the 80 percent rate epidemiologists say is needed to significantly reduce the prevalence of infections.

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The virus infects four out of five sexually active people at some point in their lives and is known to cause cervical, vulvar, vaginal, penile and anal cancer. HPV may cause more cases of throat cancer in men than smoking, according to a 2011 report that predicted throat cancers linked to the virus would become more common than HPV-related cervical cancer by 2020.