Scientists are quickly learning how Zika virus can spread from person-to-person and, in the latest findings, they’re warning that it could be transmitted through oral sex, not just intercourse.
In a detailed case study, doctors documented the case of a 24-year-old woman in Paris who contracted Zika virus after having oral sex with a 46-year-old man who returned to France from a trip to Rio de Janeiro in February.
The man – who the researchers called Patient 2 – had just recovered from Zika-like symptoms, such as a headache, fever and the signature rash. He was feeling better by the time he returned to Paris, however.
He and his partner – dubbed Patient 1 – had sex seven times from Feb. 11 to Feb 20. The case report said they had vaginal sex without ejaculation, and oral sex with ejaculation.
READ MORE: What doctors know about how Zika virus potentially spreads
Ultimately, Patient 1 began exhibiting Zika-like symptoms by Feb. 20, even though she hadn’t travelled to regions grappling with the mosquito-borne disease.
By Feb. 23, the pair was tested for the virus: the man had Zika in his semen and urine but not in his blood or his saliva.
The woman, on the other hand, had the virus in her urine and saliva, but vaginal swabs came back with negative results.
“These data support the hypothesis of sexual transmission (either oral or vaginal) of ZIKV from Patient 2 to Patient 1. We cannot rule out the possibility that transmission occurred not through semen, but through other biologic fluids, such as pre-ejaculate secretions or saliva exchanged through deep kissing,” the experts wrote in a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Read the full letter.
The couple was using oral sex as their birth control, one of the report’s authors told the New York Times.
READ MORE: These are the tell-tale symptoms of Zika virus, according to a new case study
Cases of Zika in countries that don’t have mosquitoes that transmit the virus have popped up around the world, including Germany, Portugal, New Zealand and Canada.
The first U.S. case occurred in February, too: in Texas, a patient was infected after having sex with a traveller who had just returned from a country battling the virus.
By April, the Public Health Agency of Canada reported the country’s first case of sexually transmitted Zika, too.
Last week, global health officials told couples to abstain from sex for eight weeks if they’re trying to conceive.
READ MORE: Here’s what Zika virus symptoms look like in pregnant women
Zika has been linked to a 20-fold increase in a rare defect called microcephaly in babies, in which the newborns are born with irregularly small heads and underdeveloped brains.
carmen.chai@globalnews.ca
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