Dec 16, 2014 01:27 PM EST By J Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

New research suggests that men recovering from Ebola should wait at least three months to have unprotected sex.

Ebola is a rare and deadly disease with a high fatality rate. According to the Guinean Health Ministry, the disease is mainly spread from infected people, from objects belonging to ill or dead people, "and by the consumption of meat from animals in the bush," CNN reported.

"Our exercise demonstrated that the current recommendations to prevent the sexual spread of Ebola are based on one mere observation," the researchers wrote. "Despite the evident need to conduct more research, for now, health care professionals should strongly recommend sexual abstinence or condom-protected encounters for at least three months."

For the study, Drs. Walter Cardona-Maya, Paula Velilla Hernandez, and Daniel Henao reviewed research from 1977 to 2007 on men in the convalescent phase in the Ebola virus, or men whose symptoms were fading. Researchers found only four studies that report male survivors of Ebola who donated convalescent semen. For these men, the virus persisted in their semen for an average of 66.6 days, and in one case, it persisted for 91 days.

"The current Ebola Virus Disease outbreak is the longest and largest we have ever seen. Nonetheless, our results clearly demonstrate how much we ignore about it," researchers wrote.

According to a statistical forecast released in September by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Ebola epidemic could claim hundreds of thousands of lives and infect more than 1.4 million people by January 2015.

Researchers said larger studies are needed to establish the social, clinical and biological determinants of this neglected disease.

The findings are detailed in the SAGE journal Reproductive Sciences. 

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