Researchers claim you can now catch a sexually transmitted disease through your saliva, despite NHS previously dismissing the theory.
Scientists in Australia say kissing with tongues could actually spread gonorrhoea after discovering gay men are more likely to have it in their throat than their penis.
Experts at Monash University and the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre studied 3,000 gay and bisexual men from the city amid fears that super-gonorrhoea is resistant to medicine.
More than six per cent had the disease in their mouth while less than six per cent had it in their anus and three per cent in their penis. The number was higher in a group of men who said they had only kissed another man in the last three months without having sex.
Those who had sex but did not kiss were less likely to have gonorrhoea, according to the research in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections, which is part of the British Medical Journal.
Those with more kissing partners were 46 per cent more likely to have it compared to 35 per cent for people who had sex. There is also the possibility that using spit as lubricant may also spread the infection from the throat to the anus or penis.
They concluded that this meant the risk of spreading the infection was greater for kissing than performing oral sex.
The researchers said:
‘Previously, it has generally been assumed that oropharyngeal gonorrhoea can only be acquired from an infected penis or anus, not from another man’s [throat].
‘Hence, the importance of the oropharynx has been neglected in gonorrhoea transmission.
‘Our results suggest kissing with or without sex may be a risk factor for oropharyngeal gonorrhoea.’
The best advice is to use a condom but doctors are looking into other ways to treat the disease
Professor Eric Chow said:
‘A number of pieces of evidence suggest transmission from the oropharynx [back of the throat] may be more common than previously thought. ‘[The bacteria] can be cultured from saliva, suggesting that the exchange of saliva between individuals may potentially transmit gonorrhoea.
‘Several case reports in the 1970s suggested kissing as a mode of transmission for oropharyngeal gonorrhoea… but kissing has always been neglected as a risk factor.’
As the fight against the ‘super-strain’ of gonorrhoea continues, Professor Chow said new ways of stopping the infection have to be found. Doctors are now looking for new ways to stop the infection beyond the current focus of telling people to use condoms. Earlier this year two women were among the first to be diagnosed with super-gonorrhoea after having unprotected sex with a man who had recently returned from Ibiza. Another caught it after having sex with more than one British man without a condom on the island. Public Health England linked the two cases through a ‘sexual network’.
