The Astounding Amount Of Bacteria Passed in a Kiss
The more often people kiss each other, the more alike the collections of bacteria in their saliva become. (Photo by Getty Images)
Turns out, you share more than that queen-size bed with your partner—you share bacteria as well.
During a 10-second French kiss, as many as 80 million bacteria are swapped between partners, according to new research published in the journal Microbiome.
The study also found that partners who kiss each other at least nine times a day share similar communities of bacteria in their mouths. “French kissing is a great example of exposure to a gigantic number of bacteria in a short time,” explains the lead author of the study, Remco Kort, Ph.D.
How romantic!
To test how much bacteria are shared in an intimate kiss, Kort and his colleagues had couples kiss and then asked one partner in the couple to drink a probiotic yogurt and kiss again.
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The bacteria in the yogurt drink, including Streptococcus, Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, were used a markers to trace the bacteria transfer from one partner’s mouth to the other’s. After consuming the yogurt drink, researchers found the marker bacteria both in the saliva and on the tongue of the partner who hadn’t downed the drink.
“The more often people kiss each other, the more alike the collections of bacteria in their saliva become,” noted the researchers.
So could there be a health benefit to couples swapping bacteria? "It is certainly a possibility that the transfer of bacteria between individuals may confer a health benefit," says Ilseung Cho, M.D., assistant professor in the department of gastroenterology at NYU Langone Medical Center.
"Over the past few years, we’ve really begun to appreciate the beneficial effects of bacteria on the human body. Cho told Yahoo Health. "So it’s not unreasonable to hypothesize that the sharing of ‘good’ bacteria may play a role in maintaining or promoting health."
Perhaps more interesting, though completely hypothetical, is that perhaps this method of transferring bacteria is an evolutionary tool to find a compatible mate whose “good” bacteria complement your own.
Talk about a kissing test.
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