- With Mayo Clinic internist
James M. Steckelberg, M.D.
read biographyclose windowBiography of
James M. Steckelberg, M.D.
James Steckelberg, M.D.
Dr. James Steckelberg is chairman of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Mayo Clinic, a consultant and a professor of medicine at Mayo Medical School.
A native of Fremont, Neb., Dr. Steckelberg was a Rhodes Scholar and graduated from the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine as a resident in internal medicine and a fellow in infectious diseases, and is board certified in both. He is the former director of the Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory at Mayo Clinic.
Dr. Steckelberg belongs to numerous professional organizations. He is a founding member of the Musculoskeletal Infection Society of America and a fellow with the American College of Physicians and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He has served on many Mayo Clinic committees and is a member of the Department of Medicine Leadership Committee and the executive committee of the Division of Infectious Diseases. He also served on the editorial boards of "Mayo Clinic Proceedings" and "Antimicrobial Agents & Chemotherapy" and has been an editorial reviewer for more than a dozen publications.
Dr. Steckelberg's research interests include experimental models of infection, epidemiology of infection, and antimicrobial resistance and therapy of bacterial infections.
Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Question
Genital herpes: Can you get it from a toilet seat?
Can you get genital herpes from a toilet seat?
Answer
from James M. Steckelberg, M.D.
It's very unlikely that you would get genital herpes from a toilet seat. Most sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are transmitted only during sexual contact, either by skin-to-skin contact or through exchange of bodily fluids. The microorganisms — bacteria and viruses — that cause STDs such as genital herpes tend to be sensitive to their surroundings and can't survive outside the human body on a surface like a toilet seat for very long.
- Genital herpes. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. http://www.acog.org/publications/patient_education/bp054.cfm. Accessed April 6, 2009.
- Albrecht MA. Patient information: Genital herpes. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed April 10, 2009.
