In August 2016, a 17-year-old boy in Mexico City reportedly died after a love bite he received from his girlfriend caused a stroke.
Julio Macias Gonzalez, 17, had convulsions while eating dinner with his family in Mexico City, after spending the evening with his 24-year-old girlfriend. Emergency services were called, but the boy died at the scene.
Doctors concluded that the suction of the hickey—or love bite—resulted in a blood clot, which travelled to Julio Macias Gonzalez’s brain and caused a stroke.
This was at least the second reported incident of a hickey causing a stroke. A hickey had caused a 44-year-old New Zealand woman to have a non-fatal stroke, according to a 2010 study published in the New Zealand Medical Journal.
The woman was temporarily partially paralyzed. The medics said the woman recovered after being treated with an anti-coagulant. Researchers at the time called the medical condition “a rare phenomenon.”
