Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Honey, it was the mosquitoes!

If you gave your wife a sexually-transmitted disease, she'd at least be happy if it was a new and publishable scientific discovery, wouldn't she?

Sex After a Field Trip Yields Scientific First

"There is no direct evidence that Foy's wife was infected through sexual contact, but the circumstantial evidence is strong. It's very unlikely that she was infected by a bite by a mosquito that first bit her husband; the three tropical Aedes mosquito species known to transmit Zika don't live in northern Colorado, and moreover, the virus has to complete a 2-week life cycle within the insect before it can infect the next human; Foy's wife fell ill just 9 days after his return. And yes, as the paper puts it, "patients 1 and 3 reported having vaginal sexual intercourse in the days after patient 1 returned home but before the onset of his clinical illness." ("My wife wasn't happy with what happened afterwards," Foy adds.)"


Foy BD, Kobylinski KC, Foy JLC, Blitvich BJ, Travassos da Rosa A, Haddow AD, et al. Probable non–vector-borne transmission of Zika virus, Colorado, USA. Emerg Infect Dis. 2011

[I guess I shouldn't point out that the first reference is authored by a person named "Dick", right?]

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