Deep Kissing: Alarming Teen Warning

For decades, teenagers have used the back seat of their dad's car for making out, but teens who intimately kiss multiple partners almost quadruple their risk of contracting potentially deadly meningitis, according to researchers from the National Centre for Immunization Research and Surveillance at Children's Hospital at Westmead in Sydney, Australia.

There are two times in our lives when the risk for meningitis peaks: early childhood and adolescence. Triggered by a virus or bacteria, meningitis causes the membranes around the brain and spinal cord to become inflamed. Bacterial meningitis can be fatal if it's not treated quickly. Symptoms of meningitis included high fever with cold hands and feet, vomiting, severe headache, joint and muscle pains, possible stomach cramps and diarrhea, neck stiffness, a dislike of bright lights and disorientation.

The incidence of this life-threatening condition has risen sharply in the United States and England in the 1990s, and doctors don't know why. To try to identify potential risk and protective factors, the Australian team examined 114 adolescents ages 15 to 19 who had been admitted to the hospital with meningitis in six regions of England from January 1999 to June 2000. Each case was compared with a matched control. Blood samples and nose and throat swabs were taken, and data on potential risk factors were gathered through confidential interviews.

These are the risk factors for meningitis:

1. Intimate kissing with multiple partners
   
2. A history of preceding illness
   
3. Premature birth
   
4. Being a student, especially when living in a crowded dormitory
   

These are the protective factors for meningitis:

1. Meningitis vaccination
   
2. Recent attendance at a religious event

About one in 10 teenagers carries the meningococcal bacteria in their throats. While the bacteria do not survive outside the body, they can be passed easily in the saliva from one person to the next. That is why intimately kissing multiple partners is such a high risk factor for meningitis.

The researchers are realistic. Encouraging teenagers to change their behavior to reduce their risk of disease probably won't have a major impact. What will have an impact is vaccinations, and that should become a key public health priority.

The study findings were published in the British Medical Journal.