Shutterstock
Intercourse with strangers, always a scary proposition, just got a little more terrifying thanks to the first reported case of sexually transmitted Ebola.
That’s right. Sex Ebola. You can now contract one of the world’s deadliest diseases by scrumping with someone previously infected.
So… don’t do that. Science News reports that a woman who had sex with a man who had been infected but was cleared is now symptomatic.
In this case, the two people had unprotected sex six months after the man got Ebola, and 155 days after his second blood test showed him to be clear of the virus. The genomes of the Ebola virus from the man’s semen and woman’s blood were not only practically identical but also different from all other Western African Ebola viruses that had been sequenced, researchers report October 14 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Add “Did you travel to West Africa recently?” to the list of questions you need to ask before deciding whether to use a rubber.
[Via Digg]