New Delhi:
We are sticking to the good old bear hug rather than the passionate lip-locking! Upturning the widely spread notion that sexually transmitted disease is spread almost exclusively through sexual contact, a team of may researchers claim that is possible to pass gonorrhea, a bacterium that is spread through vaginal, oral and anal sex through kissing. The sesearchers in Australia found that kissing with tongues may transmit oropharyngeal gonorrhea, or oral gonorrhea, particularly among gay and bisexual men.
The study quizzed more than 3000 men out of which six per cent tested positive for oral gonorrhoea.
The volunteers reported that they had an average of four kissing-only partners, five kissing-with-sex partners and one sex-only partner over the past three months. The researchers found that those with a higher number of kissing-only and kissing-with-sex partners were at a greater risk of testing positive for oral gonorrhea, the study said.
“We found that the more people an individual kissed also placed them at an increased risk of having throat gonorrhoea, irrespective of whether sex occurred with the kissing. This data challenges the accepted traditional transmission routes of gonorrhoea held for the past 100 years, where a partner’s penis was thought to be the source of throat infection,” Eric Chow, the lead author of the study, told the Washington Post.
“We found after we controlled statistically for the number of men kissed, that ‘the number of men someone had sex with but did not kiss was not associated with throat gonorrhoea.
“Through our research, we have shown that gonorrhoea can be passed on through kissing. This will help people understand how the infection was introduced — particularly if they have not have been sexually active.
“We know it’s unlikely that people will stop kissing, and our team is already doing a clinical trial examining whether daily use of mouthwash could prevent gonorrhoea. If it works, it could be a simple and cheap intervention for everyone.”
According to World Health Organisation (WHO), Gonorrhea a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae infects an estimation of more than 78 million people every year worldwide.
