If you regularly share a cheeky snog on the dance floor, you could be leaving yourself vulnerable to gonorrhoea, a new study has warned.
Researchers from the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre have found that people with a variation of the STD, known as throat gonorrhoea, can pass it onto others through ‘deep kissing’.
While previous studies have suggested that gonorrhoea can only be passed on during sex, the new findings suggest that this isn’t the case.
In the study, 11,442 men were surveyed on their sexual practices - including kissing with no sex, sex with no kissing, and kissing with sex - over the past three months.
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Around 6% of participants had throat gonorrhoea, 6% had anorectal gonorrhoea, and 3% had urethral gonorrhoea.
An analysis of the results revealed that while 52 of the men had only kissed people during this time, they were significantly more likely to have throat gonorrhoea.
Meanwhile, men who had a higher number of kissing-only or kissing-with-sex partners had a higher chance of having throat cancer.
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Overall, men who had kissed four or more men were 46% more likely to have throat gonorrhoea, while men who had had sex-with-kissing with four or more men were 81% more likely to have the STD.
While these findings don’t necessarily show that kissing causes gonorrhoea to be passed on, the researchers hope they will encourage people to be more wary.
In their study, published in Sexually Transmitted Infections, the researchers, led by Professor Eric Chow, wrote: “Our data provide additional evidence to support the newly proposed and as yet hypothetical model for gonorrhoea transmission that, if true, would open up preventive options such as antibacterial mouthwash that do not rely on condoms.”
