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By GATONYE GATHURA
Kenya: The act of kissing, especially deep kissing, can give you cancer, a study carried out in Mombasa has shown.
For more than a decade, it has been known that a strain of the sexually transmitted virus called herpes, which is quite common in most people, is linked to the development of the skin cancer called Kaposi sarcoma.
However, scientists have been investigating the most likely mode of transmission of the herpes virus 8 from one person to another. Now, they think saliva and mouth-to-mouth interaction between people could be it.
On Friday, researchers from the universities of Nairobi and Washington in US, published a partial report of their findings from a study carried out on 40 women in Mombasa. It indicates close mouth-to-mouth interaction could be the biggest possible route of transmission.
A full report, given to The Standard yesterday by one of the investigators, Prof Walter Jaoko of the University of Nairobi, and one of the country’s top HIV researchers, concludes that saliva is the most likely source of transmission.
The team says it found high concentration of the herpes virus in the saliva of 27 of the 40 study participants. “Salivary transmission may be an important route of infection because the mouth proved to be an important storage of the virus from where it can be transmitted to others, eventually causing skin cancer in some.”
Cancerous agent
Prof Jaoko’s team says the human herpes virus 8 or HHV 8 is the cancerous agent that causes all forms of the skin tumor – Kaposi sarcoma – ranging between 40 and 80 per cent in Kenya and much of Africa.
In the Mombasa study, samples were collected daily for 30 days and sent to the University of Washington for analysis. The researchers say the rates and quantities of herpes viruses found in the Kenyan women was nearly double what had been observed in other studies in Africa and the United States. “The study demonstrates high rates and quantities of the herpes virus residing in the throats of these women and more so those infected with HIV and with high CD4 counts.”Now the team is recommending that to reduce the incidence of this type of skin cancer, people diagnosed with herpes and are HIV positive be put on antiretroviral drugs as early as possible.
The first scientific connection between kissing and herpes infection was raised in 2000 by researchers in Washington University, the same involved in the current investigation. The team had tested saliva samples in gay men in the US for the presence of the herpes virus. Led by Dr John Pauk they had compared the level of herpes virus in saliva of these men with what was found in other body fluids and concluded that saliva was the most possible rout of transmission to others.
The study if confirmed, could have serious implications not only in adult socialisation but among mothers who pre-chew food for their babies or are in the habit of kissing their children.
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