FRIDAY, June 28 (HealthScoutNews)
Has the risk of contracting AIDS through oral sex been overstated?
That's the conclusion of a new study in which Spanish researchers examined
135 heterosexual couples who had unprotected oral sex an estimated 19,000
times during a 10-year period. In each couple, either the man or woman
was HIV-positive. Yet not one uninfected person contracted the virus that
causes AIDS, the researchers say.
"It's a much lower risk than perhaps people have been led to believe,"
says Kimberly Page Shafer, an assistant professor of medicine at the University
of California at San Francisco's Center for AIDS Prevention Studies.
"I'm not going to say people can't get HIV from oral sex, but it's a
low-risk activity," adds Page Shafer, who was not involved with the Spanish
research. Vaginal and anal intercourse are the main sexual ways to transmit
the AIDS virus. For years, oral sex was relegated to a gray area as scientists
debated its risks. Most people who engage in oral sex don't wear condoms
or use other types of protection, Page Shafer says. Determining the specific
risk of oral sex "has been a huge challenge," she says.
"People have a repertoire of sexual behaviors, and they don't limit
themselves to only oral sex."
Last year, Page Shafer reported at a National HIV Prevention Conference
that her study of 198 gay and bisexual men who said they'd only had oral
sex found that none of them became infected with HIV, even though some
engaged in the practice with HIV-positive partners.
In the Spanish study, researchers in Madrid followed several hundred
couples that included one partner who was HIV-positive from 1990 to 2000.
Then the researchers narrowed the number to 110 women and 25 men who engaged
in unprotected oral sex but wore condoms during other types of intercourse.
The results of the study appear in a recent issue of the journal AIDS.
The researchers, counting both fellatio and cunnilingus, estimated that
19,000 oral sex acts had occurred, and men had ejaculated in 34 percent
to 41 percent of the fellatio acts. However, no HIV-negative partners contracted
the virus.
Page Shafer says saliva appears to create an
environment that is unhealthy for the AIDS virus.
Michael Allerton, HIV operations policy leader with the Kaiser Permanente
Medical Group in Oakland, Calif., says there have been only a small number
of confirmed cases of HIV transmission through oral sex. "But it all depends
on a lot of things," he says. "There's a lot of variables about whether
transmission is going to occur. For example, the AIDS virus may more easily
transmit through oral sex to a person with gum disease. "While evidence
continues to mount that oral sex is at much lower risk than other activities,
the word 'risk' is still there," he adds. Allerton cautions that even if
the risk of HIV transmission is low, oral sex isn't risk-free. "You
still can get gonorrhea, syphilis and herpes," he says.
Federal health officials acknowledge the risk of HIV infection through
oral sex is less than compared to vaginal or anal sex, but transmission
of the virus is still possible.
What To Do
For more information on oral sex and AIDS, read this report from the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention.
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