I have to apologize for not writing about the anal lube study story earlier than this, I was busy with stuff and while I was reading all about it just didn;t get the time to blog.
Anyway, here's the quick summary – a recent study demonstrated the POSSIBILITY that most of the lubes we use for anal sex, including my favorite astroglide and second favorite KY liguid, may increase the chance of transmission of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and other viral STDs. The effect has to be confirmed with studies of actual people, as I understand it.
The effect is caused by the salt properties of the water based lubes – they change the salt concentration against the cell walls causing the cell walls to be damaged and become more porous.
The study did not test silicone lubes, so no news on wether silicone anal lubes are better or worse.
The only lube that did not have this salt effect was one designed for women who wnat to get pregnant – a lube called Pre – which is chemically balanced to mimic the human bodys salt concentrations.
I think we can expect the major lube brands to offer new more expensive "safer" lubes this next year.
About.com had the best article I found on this new study and it's implications – so go read it.
The overall purpose of the study was to see if lubricant might play a role in increasing risk of STD transmission during anal intercourse. To this end, the researchers wanted to understand what, if any, direct damage lubricants might have on rectal and cervical tissue. They also wanted to see how the lubricants might impact healthy bacteria that are present in the rectum. There are, of course, many ways to damage rectal tissue. In this study the researchers focused on one particular effect which can damage the tissue in the rectum essentially by drying up cells, causing them to die and slough off. This can happen if the lubricant being used has higher concentrations of salts and sugars than are found in the skin cells it comes in contact with. The lubricant can draw water out of the cells, resulting in damage that can increase risk of infection (the science minded among you can find more detailed explanations here, here, or here).
They found that the four water based lubricants that had higher concentrations of salt (Astroglide, Elbow Grease, ID Glide, and K-Y Jelly) did in fact damage the outer layer of skin cells of the rectal and cervical tissue whereas the silicone lubricant and the water based Pre lubricant did not. In terms of how the lubricants impacted the healthy bacteria, they found that both Astroglide and KY Jelly had a negative effect (KY much worse than Astroglide) and that the other lubricants did not have a toxic effect.
A second study looked at the use of lubricants during anal intercourse outside the laboratory. This study included 229 men who had reported having receptive anal intercourse in the past month, and 192 women who reported having receptive anal intercourse in the past year. Participants completed a computer assisted self-interview about sexual behavior. Among other things, participants were asked about use (or non-use) of lubricants and the particular brands they used during anal sex. From that group, 302 participants also had rectal tests for chlamydia and gonorrhea. Most of the participants reported using lubricant the last time they had receptive anal intercourse. Of the 302 participants, 25 tested positive for an anal STD. More than two-thirds of the people diagnosed with an STD reported using lube the last time they had receptive anal intercourse, compared with one third of people who had not used a lube. Read another way, people who reported using lubricants the last time they had anal sex were about twice as likely to have chlamydia or gonorrhea as those who did not use lubricants.
Taken together, these two papers seem to be suggesting that using lubricants, or at least some kinds of lubricants, might actually be a bad idea when you're on the receiving end of anal intercourse. And if you listen to the press conference that followed the presentation of the data, it sounds like at least some of the researchers are comfortable interpreting this very early data with some significance.
But don't put away that lube bottle just yet (and probably you won't be putting it away ever). Remember that collecting data, interpreting it, and reporting on it are three very different activities. While some blog posts have suggested this is radical news, consider the fact that all of the reporting from the researchers themselves and from IRMA makes it clear that this is very preliminary research, and should be interpreted as such. It's actually the first research of it's kind, and it involved sample sizes too small to draw any significant conclusions from. It raises far more questions than it answers. Here are just a few:
The clinical study of people based on recall of past anal intercourse wasn't able to take into account which lubricants were used. Participants reported using many different kinds of lubricants across encounters, sometimes combining different lubricants in a given sexual encounter. If, as the laboratory study suggests, some lubes are better than others, we need to figure out which ones are better, and do they need to be used every time, in full concentration, to be "safer"?
I think it's interesting that some people are saying this study means anal sex is "better" without a lube – that seems problematic, considering the possible physical chafing. But I have said before here that human saliva, good old spit, makes a surprising good anal lube, if you can generate enough of it.
So, we may see a resurgence of anal spit lube, lol.
