Research concludes rare parasitic disease is transmitted by gay men

It has been shown that a rare parasitic disease, which normally only is transmitted by contaminated water, to be transmitted by gay sex between hiv-positive men. Despite in the industrial world the disease is virtually absent, the situation could be changed.

Amebiasis, an infection with the single-celled amoeba Entamoebia histolytica, normally is very rare. You only catch it in a few developing countries where the amoeba is endemic, and where hygiene is somewhat substandard, leading to contact with contaminated water. the infection becomes dangerous when the amoeba invades your intestinal lining and causes a bloody diarrhoea, or when it enters the bloodstream, where it, among other things, causes liver abscesses.

For some time now, physicians suspected the disease to be a bit overrepresented among HIV-positive male homosexuals. But it was difficult to come to conclusions from small numbers, and in addition the classical diagnostic test (putting the stool under the microscope) was not really dependable.

A recent doctoral study using modern molecular techniques, pinpoints the amoeba more precisely and, what’s more, shows which amoebas were closely related. In other words: who had got the infection from whom.