What Are The Chance Of Getting Infection From Someone's Saliva?

Posted on Tue, 17 Jul 2018

Medically reviewed by Ask A Doctor - 24x7 Medical Review Team

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 Answered on

Mon, 3 Oct 2022 Last reviewed on

Question : Hey doctor recently when I was working at a nightclub as a photographer I had an argument with a random girl there and she was spitting in my face when she was talking to me at close proximity and the spit was going in my mouth. I am just a little concerned as to what you can catch from an interaction like this since the girl looked pretty trashy should I be worried about interactions like this in the future could I have caught anything bad?

Answered by Dr. Malik (2 hours later)

Brief Answer:
The chance of getting infection from someone's saliva is very low.

Detailed Answer:

Hello,

The chance of getting any infection from someone’s saliva is very low. Human saliva contains biological (antibodies) and chemicals substances that protect humans from most of the infections. The only concern might be a viral infection called infectious mononucleosis – “a kissing disease”. The disease may transmit through saliva and may present with fatigue, swollen tonsils and lymph nodes, fever, and headache after a week of contact with human saliva. The treatment is symptomatic with bed rest and taking plenty of fluids.

Certain bacterial and viral infections may spread through saliva only a person has any open mouth sores or skin lesions, or human bite causing skin break.

Please, do not worry. If you are overall healthy, getting an infection from someone’s saliva is very low.

I hope the above information will be helpful to you. Please, feel free to ask me if there is anything else you need to know.

Thank you.

Regards

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Arnab Banerjee