Oral Sex Carries Very Low Risk of HIV Transmission
Oral Sex Carries Very Low Risk of HIV Transmission
Aug. 14, 2001 (Atlanta) -- It can happen -- but it's very, very unlikely that you'll get HIV by performing oral sex on a man. Researchers hope the finding, reported here at the CDC's National HIV Prevention Conference, will offer a low-risk alternative to sexually active people.
Kimberly Page Shafer, PhD, MPH, and co-workers at the University of California, San Francisco, followed 194 HIV-negative gay men for two years. In repeated interviews, the men said that their only sexual activity was to perform oral sex on other men. Repeated HIV tests showed that not one of the men got the AIDS virus -- even those with HIV-infected sex partners.
"Oral sex is safer sex," Shafer tells WebMD. "It is a much safer alternative to anal sex, and other data show it is safer than anal sex using a condom. Oral sex with a condom may be the safest thing you can do, but 98% of people in our study don't use condoms -- and [many of] them swallowed the semen. And a good percentage of them -- one in five -- have sex with an HIV-positive partner."
The men tended to have multiple sex partners; half reported more than three in the last six months -- so the total number of sex acts over two years was quite large. Many of the men were quite worried that their behavior put them at risk of AIDS, but this fear tended to diminish after multiple HIV tests. Nearly all of them said they hated the taste of condoms.
Earlier studies have shown that people do get HIV by performing oral sex. However, these people are few and far between. These studies, Shafer says, suggest that the risk of getting HIV from a single act of oral sex is about 1 in 40,000. Still, it does happen. No sex act is completely safe.
All the same, oral sex seems to be pretty safe. Shafer points out that the men in her study are having unprotected sex with multiple partners in San Francisco -- at a time when the city is seeing a sharp increase in the number of gay men infected with HIV.
Oral Sex Carries Very Low Risk of HIV Transmission
Aug. 14, 2001 (Atlanta) -- It can happen -- but it's very, very unlikely that you'll get HIV by performing oral sex on a man. Researchers hope the finding, reported here at the CDC's National HIV Prevention Conference, will offer a low-risk alternative to sexually active people.
Kimberly Page Shafer, PhD, MPH, and co-workers at the University of California, San Francisco, followed 194 HIV-negative gay men for two years. In repeated interviews, the men said that their only sexual activity was to perform oral sex on other men. Repeated HIV tests showed that not one of the men got the AIDS virus -- even those with HIV-infected sex partners.
"Oral sex is safer sex," Shafer tells WebMD. "It is a much safer alternative to anal sex, and other data show it is safer than anal sex using a condom. Oral sex with a condom may be the safest thing you can do, but 98% of people in our study don't use condoms -- and [many of] them swallowed the semen. And a good percentage of them -- one in five -- have sex with an HIV-positive partner."
The men tended to have multiple sex partners; half reported more than three in the last six months -- so the total number of sex acts over two years was quite large. Many of the men were quite worried that their behavior put them at risk of AIDS, but this fear tended to diminish after multiple HIV tests. Nearly all of them said they hated the taste of condoms.
Earlier studies have shown that people do get HIV by performing oral sex. However, these people are few and far between. These studies, Shafer says, suggest that the risk of getting HIV from a single act of oral sex is about 1 in 40,000. Still, it does happen. No sex act is completely safe.
All the same, oral sex seems to be pretty safe. Shafer points out that the men in her study are having unprotected sex with multiple partners in San Francisco -- at a time when the city is seeing a sharp increase in the number of gay men infected with HIV.
