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Marcello Piazza, MD; Antonio Chirianni, MD; Ludovico Picciotto, MD; Vincenzo Guadagnino, MD; Raffaele Orlando, MD; Pietro Tullio Cataldo, MD
Clinica delle Malattie Infettive Napoli, Italy

JAMA. 1989;262(16):2231.

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

In Reply. —

Our study does not intend to give evidence that kissing transmits acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, but only to suggest that this event is biologically possible.

Complete inactivation of HIV by salivary inhibitor after 30 minutes' incubation in vitro has been reported.¹ However, in vitro inactivation cannot be compared with inactivation in the oral cavity during kissing.

As far as transmission during oral sex is concerned, recent investigations^2,3 indicate that this can occur by saliva (infection has been reported in men whose only sexual activity was insertive fellatio). A recent study⁴ reports transmission of HIV infection from a 70-year-old woman infected by blood transfusion to her 72-year-old husband, who had had no sexual activity except kissing for many years. Transmission of HIV has also been reported from oral lesions in infants infected in the hospital by mothers during breast-feeding.⁵

The analogy of kissing to needle-stick . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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