The male urethra – the tube by which urine exits the physique – is house to an array of micro organism, a few of that are in all probability picked up throughout vaginal intercourse.
Evelyn Toh on the Indiana University School of Medicine and her colleagues swabbed the urethras of 110 males who had no sexually transmitted infections or urethra-related points. The males, common age 28, got here from a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds. Transgender individuals weren’t included within the research.
Of these males, 92 supplied swabs with enough ranges of bacterial DNA for additional evaluation.
The detected micro organism might be separated into two teams – these that may stay within the presence of oxygen and due to this fact in all probability dwell close to the tip of the penis, and people who can’t stay when oxygen is current and due to this fact in all probability dwell greater up within the urethra.
The former group was present in a lot of the males’s swabs and are in all probability native to the penile urethra, in line with the researchers.
The latter group, nevertheless, was dominated by micro organism which are usually disrupted within the situation bacterial vaginosis (BV), a standard trigger of surprising vaginal discharge that’s thought to come back about when the vagina’s microbiome will get out of sync.
Of the 110 males, 75 recognized as heterosexual, 22 as gay and 13 as “bisexual or other”.
Only the lads who reported having vaginal intercourse had the BV-associated micro organism, reminiscent of Gardnerella vaginalis, suggesting that they acquired them throughout vaginal intercourse. These micro organism weren’t related to oral or anal intercourse.
“The most important takeaway of our study is that it establishes a baseline for the flora of a healthy [penile] urethra,” says co-author David Nelson, additionally on the Indiana University School of Medicine.
Catriona Bradshaw at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, says that this research particulars the bacterial composition of an infection-free penile urethra, which might function a baseline to measure whether or not a penile microbiome is wholesome or contaminated.
The outcomes additionally assist the speculation that males who’ve vaginal intercourse with no condom could switch sure micro organism from one lady to a different, says Erica Plummer at Monash University.
Topics:
Source: www.newscientist.com