A new study reveals that kissing your partner means transferring over 80 million germs. According to Dutch researchers, a single kiss for 10 seconds can result to shifting of germs from one person to another. If a couple would smooch several times a day, it would mean sharing similar germs.
According to Remco Kort, the lead author of the study, "To our knowledge, the exact effects of intimate kissing on the oral microbiota (microscopic living organisms) have never been studied. We wanted to find out the extent to which partners share their oral microbiota, and it turns out, the more a couple kiss, the more similar they are."
He added, "Intimate kissing, involving full tongue contact and saliva exchange, appears to be a courtship behavior unique to humans and is common in over 90 % of known cultures."
The results were based on many experiments. They conducted tests on 21 couples and one of the test involves giving a probiotic drink containing bacteria to them. After that, they were asked to kiss for approximately ten seconds. They took swab samples from the couples and revealed that an estimated 80 million germs were passed between the partners. Furthermore, another test revealed that the type of bacteria in the tongue of the couples were similar than those who were not related with each other.
The study was published in the journal Microbiome. According to the study, germs in the mouth play only a small part but can be a ground for transferring communicable disease such as flu and other respiratory diseases. The mouth encompasses more than 700 types of bacteria and all in all, it has more than 100 trillion microorganisms, some of which aids in digestion of food particles.
There are other diseases that can be transferred through kissing such as colds, glandular fever, herpes virus, hepatitis B and even warts which all entail viruses. Kissing can also transfer bacterial diseases like Meningococcal disease and tooth decay.
