Sweat your way to a hepatitis infection

As a general rule, most people are extra careful anymore when dealing with body fluids -- especially blood -- due to diseases like hepatitis and HIV that are spread that way. But now there's information that sweat may be more dangerous than we thought -- it carries the hepatitis B virus, and therefore it's probable that people playing contact sports together could pass the infection around to each other in a most unlikely way.

A study looked at Olympic wrestlers specifically, finding HBV DNA in the sweat of those infected with the virus. This, obviously, raises new questions and concerns about the safety of sports participants, and The British Journal of Sports Medicine is recommending it be required that all those involved in contact sports and playing under adult rules to be vaccinated against hepatitis B specifically.