Research Shows Rare Parasitic Disease Amebiasis Is Spread By Gay Sex Between HIV Positive Men
A Taiwanese researcher, Chieng-Ching Hung has received a doctorate from the University of Antwerp and the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp after identifying a rare parasitic disease, usually only transmitted by contaminated water, can also be transmitted by gay sex between HIV-positive men.
Currently Amebiasis, an infection with the single-celled amoeba Entamoebia histolytica, is very rarely seen in the industrial world due to the disease only being prevalent where the amoeba is endemic, and where hygiene is substandard, but does have a potential to spread in what is an ever more mobile world.
Only becoming dangerous when the amoeba affects the intestinal lining, the resulting condition is bloody diarrhoea, and if it’s able to enter the blood stream can lead to the possibility of, amongst other things, liver abscesses. The current snnual death rate from the disease currently stands at around 70,000 worldwide a year.
Until Hung’s ground breaking findings, physicians had been aware that the disease seemed more prevalent in HIV-positive male homosexuals, but couldn’t form any concrete evidence due to the small numbers, and the unreliability of the classical diagnostic test (that of inspecting stools under the microscope. Hung, however, has gained more conclusive evidence by moving from these relatively simple tests and using molecular techniques instead, something allowing him to precisely pinpoint the amoeba, and in turn see which were more closely related – i.e. who got the infection from who.
And it was this that was able to show the connection to gay sex between HIV positive men, with the findings showing Taiwan seropositive (HIV infected) gay men were more often affected by the amoeba than not only the general healthy population. but also seropositive heterosexuals,with men from different regions also tending to be infected by closely related amoebas, something attributed to homosexual (oral-anal) contact.
