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Infectious Agents and Cancer

This section contains statistics on cancer and infections.Figure 0.1: The accumulated genetic changes in an infected cell, leading to leukaemia

Cancer is not in any sense an infectious disease. However a small number of infectious agents, especially certain viruses, appear to play a key role in causing particular types of cancer.

It is estimated that as many as one in ten cancer cases in the UK and one in four cases in the developing world are linked to such infections.