Hickeys Can Transmit Oral Herpes

BOSTON (AP) _ Love bites are not as innocent as they might seem, say doctors who found they can transmit oral herpes.

In a report in today’s New England Journal of Medicine, the doctors reported the case of a young man who got the infection from a hickey.

″This case demonstrates that herpes simplex virus can be transmitted by direct inoculation and that even hickeys are not totally innocuous,″ wrote Dr. Nester C. del Rosario of Eastern Virginia Medical School.

The otherwise healthy 22-year-old went to the hospital complaining of an inch-wide, swollen, blistered, red spot on his neck. He’d had it for five days after his girlfriend gave him a hickey on that spot.

The doctors found that the red spot contained herpes simplex virus type 1. This is the variety of the herpes simplex virus that causes cold sores and fever blisters. The other common variety, type 2, causes genital herpes.

″In our case, the infection was transmitted to the patient by his girlfriend, who had fever blisters at the time of the inoculation,″ they wrote.

The doctors said the herpetic hickey went away by itself within three weeks.