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Robert J. Woolley
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign

JAMA. 1989;262(16):2230.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Piazza et al¹ report a study that concludes that "passionate" kissing is unsafe. (Actually, they say it is "[not] protective," a curious term. No intimate activity is itself "protective" against human immunodeficiency virus [HIV] transmission, although using a condom, for example, may be. I assume the authors mean "not protected" or "unsafe.") I find this conclusion doubtful.

Since the authors base their conclusion on the presence of blood in saliva, I assume they agree that the saliva itself is not of major concern in HIV transmission.² It is only the blood—and only that quantity of blood transferred between partners—that results in infection. Further, it is infected leukocytes that are of concern, not free virus.³

I present some rough calculations, always erring on the side of overestimating the infection risk: Assume that all of the after-kissing increase in saliva hemoglobin concentration found by Piazza et . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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