The FDA approves underwear types to protect against infections during oral sex

This is a story about infectious diseases, gender, and underwear. More specifically, it’s about sexually transmitted diseases, oral sex, ultra-thin, ultra-stretchy, vanilla-flavored panties.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved panties to be considered protection against infections that can be transmitted from the vagina or anus during oral sex. This is my first underwear.

Underwear is part of an under-researched but important area of ​​sexual health, where some options for protection are considered cumbersome and rarely used.

“Oral sex is not completely risk-free,” said Dr. Jeanne Marazzo, Head of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She said the need for protective measures is becoming more and more important as more “teenagers are starting their first sexual activity in oral sex.” She added that for people of all ages, protective barriers that are fun to use can “reduce anxiety about that particular behavior and increase joy.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, infectious diseases such as herpes, gonorrhea, and syphilis can be transmitted by oral sex. According to the CDC, the risk of HIV being transmitted from the vagina via oral sex is considered to be very low. However, HPV (human papillomavirus) is so susceptible, and some types of HPV-induced mouth and throat infections can develop into oral and cervical cancer, the agency said. increase.

Since most people who have oral sex have vaginal or anal sex in the same encounter, the frequency with which people infect the infection in this way is unknown and difficult to study, identified as LGBTQ. Massachusetts focused on the patient.

“FDA approval for this product gives people another option to protect against sexually transmitted infections during oral sex,” said Courtney Lias, director of the FDA office, who led the underwear review.

The only product previously granted protection during oral sex was the dental dam. This is a thin rectangular sheet of latex (or polyurethane in some cases) that usually needs to be held in place by hand to form a barrier between the mouth and genitals.

Invented in 1864, as the name implies, the dental dam, originally made of rubber, was designed to isolate teeth during dental treatment. However, the AIDS crisis has raised concerns about sexual transmission of infectious diseases, and in the early 1990s, the Australian company Golde Health had a dental dam that was primarily inspired by the concerns of women having sex with women. A company official said it was created.

Some brands of dental dams are FDA-approved for protection from sexually transmitted diseases, but the device is not exactly a hit.

“They aren’t very popular,” Marrazzo said. “So, to be honest, isn’t there anything less sexy than a dental dam?”

There is little data on how widely they are used, but a 2010 survey of 330 Australian women who had sex with women reported that they had used dental dams. Only 9.7% said they used the dam frequently, and 2.1% said they used it frequently. According to the 2021 CDC report, the use of dental dams and other safe sex methods was “rare” among women who have sex with women.

Dams are sold online and in sex shops, but they are not widely available in pharmacy chains and are usually more expensive than condoms. The CDC web page about dental dams shows how to cut a condom to make a dental dam, which also seems unpopular.

Chris Barcelos, an assistant professor of women, gender and sexuality research at the University of Massachusetts Boston, said: “They are even more hated than condoms.”

The idea of ​​underwear like Dam struck Melanie Cristol after experiencing it in 2014 during her honeymoon in Mexico with her then wife. Kristol, then a corporate lawyer, discovered that she had an infection that could be a sexually transmitted disease.

“I was very disappointed,” Kristol said, noting how limited protection options were. When she was a college sex educator and was teaching about dental dams, she “people saw me like I was crazy.”

“I wanted to be sexy and confident and use something that was made with my body and real sex in mind,” she said.

Kristol founded a company that began selling disposable underwear for “vulva people” in 2018. She says she named this product Lorals because the L sound “evokes words like love and desire and feels a bit like the movements you use” during her oral sex. I did.