Isn’t that a pretty weak p Value ?
I just read the abstract and might have mis-interpreted it. But on a first glance this looks like an April fools joke.
See, sperm contains hormone-like peptides, evolved for humans to react to. You do not generally eat concentrated amounts thereof. (At least didn't...)
Additionally, a woman who has had more intimate exposure to her husband is probably less likely to have negative reactions to a fetus which they have created, judging from basic adaptive immunology.
Imagine the awkwardness when someone tries to get funding to confirm.
In this particular case they seem to have a clear hypothesis on why there could be a strong link between one and the other: > "Oral sex might induce maternal tolerance towards paternal antigens of the fetus".
Anyway. This doesn't mean that this is a strong study. Just pointing out that at least they seem to have a theory on why oral sex can protect against miscarriages.
"association became weaker" with a p=.21
edit: If you are downvoting this as an emotional reaction to something you haven't considered before, please consider calming down and examining the evidence with a rational mind. Your health and that of the people you love are at risk.
Second, it's not oral sex that increases the odds, it's papillomavirus, which can be transmitted through oral sex (but also through other means of sex, including kissing).
You could have oral sex with someone that doesn't have the papillomavirus as often as you want, and you wouldn't get cancer from. In fact even sticking to a single oral partner (e.g. your spouse) reduces the (already small) odds heavily, even if you're not sure whether they have HPV or not.
To these people, 'oral sex' seems to mean implicitly mean a female giving and a male receiving. Typical.
Anyway, flagged in 5, 4, 3, 2, ...
Talk about a weak result! They're 95% confident that women with recurrent miscarriages are at least 3% less likely to perform oral sex.
