WOMEN'S
HEALTH
Yeast outbreaks
not linked to partner
Women
with recurrent symptomatic yeast infections often believe that
their sexual partners may be to blame for re-infecting them.
But a new study finds that outbreaks in women are not related
to infections in their partners.
The
idea was that yeast infections, recurrent problems for about
40 percent of women, tended
to be passed to their partners, who then passed them back after
the symptoms had cleared up.
But
writing in the December issue of the Journal of Women's
Health, researchers said that symptomatic yeast infections
seemed to follow their own course.
The
lead author, Dr. Barbara D. Reed, said that male
partners of infected women often carried the same organism.
``But whether they did or not,'' Reed said, ``it had nothing
to do with whether the women had a recurrence of their symptomatic
yeast infection.''
The
researchers did find, however, that some
sexual practices, such as oral sex, might lead to yeast infections
in some women with recurring infections.