US drug agency authorizes protective underwear for oral sex

This is a story about infections, sex and underwear. More specifically, it’s about sexually transmitted infections, oral sex, and ultra-thin, super-elastic, vanilla-flavored panties.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized panties to be considered protection against infections that can be transmitted from the vagina or anus during oral sex. It is the first time that an underwear has earned this qualification.

Panties are part of an area of ​​sexual health that is insufficiently studied but important, where the few protection options available are seen as uncomfortable and are almost never used.

“Oral sex is not entirely risk-free,” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the division of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She said the need for protective methods is gaining in importance as more “adolescents are starting their first sexual activity with oral sex.” For people of all ages, she said, a protective barrier that is pleasant to wear “can reduce anxiety and increase pleasure linked to that particular behavior.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), infectious diseases such as herpes, gonorrhea, and syphilis can be transmitted through oral sex. The risk of transmitting HIV from the vagina through oral sex is considered very low, the CDC said. But HPV, or human papillomavirus, is more easily transmitted that way, and mouth or throat infections from some types of HPV can progress to oral or neck cancer, the agency said.

How often people transmit infections in this way is unclear and difficult to study because most people who have oral sex have vaginal or anal sex in the same encounter, said Dr. Kenneth Mayer, director of medical research at the community health center Fenway Health in Massachusetts, which primarily serves patients who identify as LGBTQIA+.

“The FDA authorization of this product gives people another option to protect themselves against STDs during oral sex,” said Courtney Lias, FDA sector director who spearheaded the protective panty review.

The only product previously authorized to offer protection during oral sex was a so-called “dental dam,” or mouth barrier—a thin, rectangular sheet of latex (or sometimes polyurethane) that normally needs to be held in position with the hands to form a barrier between the mouth and the genitals.

As the name suggests, the mouth barrier, invented in 1864 and originally made of rubber, was created to isolate teeth during dental procedures. But the AIDS crisis led to concerns about the sexual transmission of infections, and in the early 1990s an Australian firm, Glyde Health, created a mouthguard inspired primarily by the concerns of women who have sex with women, a company representative said. .

There is not much data on the frequency of mouth barrier use, but a 2010 study of 330 Australian women who had sex with women found that only 9.7% of them said they had ever used the mouth barrier and only 2.1% said use them often. A 2021 CDC study found that the use of mouthguards and other safe sex methods is infrequent among women who have sex with women.

Mouth barriers are sold online and in sex shops, but are not widely available in pharmacies, and often cost more than condoms. The CDC’s web page on mouth barriers shows how to cut a condom to make a mouth barrier, but that idea doesn’t seem to have gained popularity either.

“Many people report that using a mouth guard is cumbersome, cumbersome and takes all the pleasure out of oral sex, for both giver and receiver,” said Chris Barcelos, associate professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. “They are even more hated than condoms.”

Melanie Cristol came up with the idea of ​​creating a pair of panties that would act as a mouthguard after spending her honeymoon in Mexico with her then-wife in 2014. Cristol, who was then a corporate lawyer, discovered she had a sexually transmitted infection. .

Realizing how limited her options for protection were, she was “super disheartened,” she said, recalling that when she was a sex educator in college and mentioned mouth barriers, “people looked at me like I was crazy.”

“I wanted to feel sexy and confident, I wanted to wear something that was made for my body and for having sex,” she explained.

In 2018, she started a company that started selling disposable underwear to “people with vulvas”. She named her product Lorals, in part because the sound of the L “evokes words like ‘love’ and ‘lust’ [amor e tesão, em inglês] and somewhat resembles the movement you make” during oral sex.

Available in a bikini or shorts version, the panties are made of latex as thin as the material condoms are made of. It seals the inner thighs to prevent fluid leakage, Cristol said. The company promotes its use for a number of reasons, including when a woman is menstruating, when a partner has a rough beard, or when a person has experienced trauma in the past and doesn’t want to expose themselves too much.

Cristol said that in response to consumer feedback, the company reduced the strength of the vanilla flavor, added more cornstarch to reduce stickiness and will introduce a clear version in addition to the current version, which is black and opaque.

On Thursday the company will start selling panties explicitly to protect against infections. According to Cristol, they will be similar to his other products, but will meet the stricter uniformity standards required for FDA clearance.

“What’s interesting is that the company basically eroticized protection, something that condom manufacturers have been trying to do for years, without much success,” Marrazzo said.

The FDA said it did not require human clinical trials but, as it does with condoms, authorized Lorals after the company submitted extensive documentation on the product’s thickness, elasticity, strength and other characteristics. In the last year the FDA has also licensed two other companies that produce mouthguards, a fact that may suggest an increase in consumer interest.

Two users of Lorals panties, whose contact details were provided by the company and who asked to be identified only by their first names due to the delicacy of the subject, described various reasons that led them to wear the underwear.

Wisty, 28, who identifies as pansexual, has had sex with both men and women and uses the neuter pronoun (they/them), said the panties are “a solution I didn’t know I needed.”

A Boston-area resident, dancer and reiki energy healer, Wisty said he has herpes simplex, a common infection that in rare cases can lead to serious inflammatory conditions. “I wanted to find something that would make it easier for me to set the limits I wanted,” said Wisty. “I wanted to be able to explore and enjoy my sexuality and at the same time have the peace of mind and security of knowing that I am safe from the risk of my fluids spilling over.”

Shelly, 29, a nurse in Washington state, said she saw the panties on TikTok at a time when she and her fiance, Ashton, were having difficulty getting back into oral sex after cancer that required reconstructive surgery altered mobility. of Ashton’s tongue and his gustatory capacity. After cancer treatment, oral sex, which in the past had been their favorite sexual activity, made Ashton feel like she was choking, and they hadn’t had it in almost two years.

“It was such an important thing, Ashton was into it a lot more than penetrative sex or anything else,” Shelly said. Without performing oral sex, she said she felt “a lot of insecurity, thinking that he might have lost interest” in her.

She ordered the panties “and we spent a couple of hours just looking at them,” Shelly said. “We thought, ‘What is this? It smells like vanilla. It stretches to infinity. What is this?’.”

Wearing panties during oral sex worked very well, Shelly said. She said she barely felt her panties and that Ashton reported that the texture was skin-like and the taste was “like a cookie”.

Shelley said she appreciates the protection from infection, because Ashton is likely vulnerable to cancers that can be caused by sexually transmitted infections.

The sexual experience was especially important, she said. “I thought I would never feel that again. And he was super excited when he realized, ‘I can do anything.’

Translation by Clara Allain.