Do you have any idea how hard it is to write an inane but mildly amusing introduction to the Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five every week?
No, I didn’t think so.
Instead I’ll let this edition speak for itself… after all it is the 69th FFFF!
Questions
Q1. What proportion of people who die do so during sexual intercourse?
- about 1 in 500
- If you believe this retrospective study — I suspect that death during intercouse is under-reported (see Dangerous Love):
Parzeller M, Raschka C, Bratzke H. Sudden cardiovascular death in correlation with sexual activity — results of a medicolegal postmortem study from 1972–1998. Eur Heart J. 2001 Apr;22(7):610-1. PMID: 11259149. [Fulltext]
Q2. Which member of the LITFL team is driving around town with a ‘Just Married’ sign on his car?
- Kane Guthrie
- Congratulations big man!
Q3. Can a love bite cause a stroke?
- Yes — if you’re stupid enough to suck really hard on your loved one’s neck over his or her internal carotid artery.
Wu TY, Hsiao J, Wong EH. Love bites — an unusual cause of blunt internal carotid artery injury. NZMJ. 2010; 123(1326) PMID: 21326406 [full text]
Two views of the internal carotid artery in the affected patient. The arrows point to thrombus. Longitudinal view on the left, transverse on the right. From Wu et al (2010) (Click image for source)
Q4. In 2005, the first case report was published describing penile entrapment by one of these:
Can you guess how old the patient was?
- 69 years old.
- It turns out that the neck of a 1.5L Coca Cola PET bottle is particularly difficult to remove from an entrapped penis. I suggest reading what happened to this poor chap in the reference below… A diamond-tipped dental drill wasn’t even up to the task! But, fear not, 3 weeks later the patient reported ‘full recovery of penile outer appearance and function’ despite his ordeal.
Voegeli TA, Effert PJ. Pentaethylene-terephthalate (PET) bottles: a new device for autoerotic strangulation of the penis causing serious injury. Arch Sex Behav. 2005 Aug;34(4):469-70. PMID: 16010469. [fulltext pdf]
Q5. Can ciguatera poisoning be sexually transmitted?
- Possibly yes.
- Ciguatera toxicity is a type of food poisoning caused by dinoflagellate ciguatoxins that accumulate in fish. It can cause a range of gastrointestinal and neurological symptoms, include the classically described (but probably erroneously) phenomenon of ‘hot-cold reversal’ (better termed ‘cold allodynia’ — find out more about ciguatera and other types of seafood poisoning here).
- Lange et al (1989) described a case of a man with ciguatera toxicity who experienced painful ejaculation. His ‘unaffected’ partner reported dyspareunia which the authors attributed to ciguatera toxin in the man’s semen (although they were unable to detect the toxin in any samples…). You be the judge.
Lange WR, Lipkin KM, Yang GC. Can ciguatera be a sexually transmitted disease? J Toxicol Clin Toxicol. 1989;27(3):193-7. PubMed PMID: 2810444.
- Hat tip to Leon Gussow F.UCEM of The Poison Review fame for this one!
If you ‘loved’ this edition of FFFF you might want to follow this link to learn more about Dangerous Love.
About Chris Nickson
