Sex and Ebola !!!

When the only way to get an often fatal disease is through contact with body fluids, it makes good sense to be very careful about sexual partners and practices. But since Ebola victims can infect others only when they are showing symptoms -- high fever, vomiting, diarrhea, weakness and aches -- physical intimacy probably isn't a common way of transmitting the disease.

However, the Ebola virus can survive in semen for months after a man recovers from the infection, posing an ongoing threat to sexual partners long after he is well. At a time when a man's bloodstream is swimming with antibodies, and he is immune to the disease, he still may be able to infect others..Ebola is transmitted through bodily fluids, but only after a patient begins showing symptoms, experts say.
Even though sex involves a high level of bodily fluid exchange -- including semen, saliva and sweat -- most experts say it isn't risky if a person is not showing initial flu-like symptoms of the virus such as a high fever, body aches and vomiting or diarrhea. It's safe to say that such symptoms could compel a person to crawl into bed -- but most likely alone.

In that way Ebola is different from other viruses, such as HIV and human papillomavirus (HPV), which can spread through sexual contact even when the person has no visible signs of an infection.

But some experts say there still isn't enough information about the transmission of this particular strain of the virus, known as Ebola Zaire.

It is still uncertain how quickly the virus emerges in a various bodily fluids and at what level. A study published in 2007 in the Journal of Infectious Diseases tried to answer this question by analyzing a variety of samples taken from patients during an Ebola outbreak in Uganda that occurred in 2000. The Ebola virus was detected in 8 of 16 saliva samples and 1 of 2 semen samples. Those samples were taken when the patients already had serious, acute infections. It's unclear how much of the virus might be present earlier in a patient's illness.However, health experts say there is definitely reason to be concerned about sex after Ebola. Research conducted over the years has found that Ebola does remain in a patient's semen for much longer than other bodily fluids, even after a patient has recovered from the acute infection and it's no longer detectable in a blood test.

According to the World Health Organization, a lab worker who contracted Ebola on the job was found to have traces of the virus in his semen 61 days after the initial infection. Subsequent research has found the virus can live for up to three months in semen. This could theoretically mean a man could infect his partner weeks or even months after he has recovered from the illness