It's official: sex is good for you, at least in moderation. Psychologists in Pennsylvania have shown that people who have sex once or twice a week get a boost to their immune systems.
Scientists can evaluate how robust our immune systems are by measuring levels of immunoglobulin A (IgA), an antigen found in saliva and mucosal linings. "IgA is the first line of defence against colds and flu," says Carl Charnetski of Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre. IgA binds to pathogens at all the points of entry to the body, then calls on the immune system to destroy them.
To find out if sex can alter IgA levels, Charnetski and his colleague Frank Brennan asked 111 Wilkes undergraduates, aged 16 to 23, how frequently they'd had sex over the previous month. They also measured levels of IgA in the volunteers' saliva.
The results showed that participants who had sex less than once a week had a tiny increase in IgA over those who abstained completely. Those who had one or two sexual encounters each week had a 30 per cent rise in levels of the antigen. But people who had very frequent sex-three times a week or more-had lower IgA levels than the abstainers. The researchers presented the results this week at a meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association in Providence, Rhode Island.
Clifford Lowell, an immunologist at the University of California at San
Francisco, thinks the high levels of IgA in volunteers who had moderately
frequent sex are easy to understand. "Sexually active people may be exposed to
many more infectious agents than sexually non-active people," Lowell says. "The
immune system would respond to these foreign antigens by producing and releasing
more IgA." This could give them better protection against colds and flu.
Why there was no IgA rise in the most sexually active group is less clear. "My
feeling is that the people in the very-frequent-sex group may be in obsessive or
poor relationships that are causing them a
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Contact: Claire Bowles
claire.bowles@rbi.co.uk
44-171-331-2751
New Scientist
14-Apr-1999