Every
time you share a long kiss with your partner, you transfer 80 million bacteria
to his or her mouth. That’s the somewhat icky conclusion of a new study of 21
intimate couples at a zoo in Amsterdam. When scientists swabbed the mouths of
the participants before and after they locked lips, they didn’t detect a huge
change in the bacterial composition—or microbiota—of their mouths.
That could
be because the couples had already kissed so many times, they had become home
to the same bacterial populations. It could also be that people who fall in
love have similar lifestyles and similar diets, which can influence the mouth’s
microbiota. To estimate just how many bacteria are transferred during make-out
sessions, the team asked the volunteers for one more kiss, right after one of
the partners had been drinking a probiotic yogurt, which is filled with
bacteria not commonly found in the mouth.
The test revealed that people
transfer about 80 million bacteria to each other during a kiss, as the team
reports today in Microbiome. That may sound like a lot, but the mouth is home
to about a billion bacteria. So perhaps it’s not so icky after all.
Source: http://www.sciencemag.org
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