Posted on 01/26/2005 7:18:46 PM PST by NYC GOP Chick
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Wed Jan 26, 7:02 PM ET
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By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Rates of early death and disability that can be attributed to sexual behavior are three times higher in the United States than other so-called developed nations, a new study finds.
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This finding precludes the AIDS (news - web sites) epidemic in many African countries.
American men still die more often as a result of having a sexually transmitted disease, researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) said, but more cases are reported in American women. The findings were published in the Jan. 27 issue of the British journal Sexually Transmitted Infections.
"It certainly is disturbing," said Dr. Cynthia Krause, assistant clinical professor of obstetrics/gynecology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. "The challenge is how to represent this in a way that's not alarmist, to make women aware of the real risks."
An earlier survey had found that half of all deaths in the United States in 1990 were attributable to nine risk factors that included sexual behavior. That category alone accounted for 30,000 deaths. The researchers behind the new study didn't think this provided a complete picture of the health toll, given that sexually transmitted diseases are associated with other problems such as infertility, psychological trauma and stigma.
They set out to quantify the public health burden of sexually transmitted diseases in 1998 by looking at national data on sexual health and reproduction, surveillance systems for infectious diseases, hospital and outpatient statistics, birth and death records as well as published research.
They then calculated "adverse health consequences," such as infertility, cervical cancer, and HIV (news - web sites) infections. They also factored in premature deaths and "disability adjusted life years" (DALYs), a figure indicating years of life cut short by premature death and loss of healthy living years as a result of disability.
In 1998, sexual behavior accounted for about 20 million "adverse health consequences" (equivalent to more than 7,500 per 100,000 people) and 29,782 deaths (or 1.3 percent of all deaths in the United States), the study found.
Sixty-two percent of the "adverse health consequences" and 57 percent of "disability adjusted life years" were among women. Curable infections and their consequences accounted for more than half of these health problems. Viral infections -- mostly HIV/AIDS -- and their consequences accounted for almost all deaths among men and women.
In terms of percentages, more men (66 percent) than women died due to sexually transmitted diseases. But if HIV/AIDS were not considered, then 89 percent of deaths attributed to sexual behavior would have been among women.
HIV/AIDS was the leading cause of death among men, while cervical cancer and HIV/AIDS were the leading causes of death among women.
These estimates are probably conservative, the authors stated.
The study did not address why the United States was hit so hard by sexually transmitted diseases, although the study's lead author, Dr. Shahul Ebrahim, said that behavior was only part of the equation.
"Everybody is having sex in the world, but some places have a low HIV prevalence," said Ebrahim, who is a medical epidemiologist with the CDC's National Center for Birth Defects. "Behavior is just one indicator. Another issue is transmission risk factors."
Researchers are planning to use the data to increase the public's awareness of the problem.
"The two most important issues are HIV and cervical cancer [which can occur from having numerous sexual partners]," Ebrahim said. "For cervical cancer, we have a national program to screen all women of a certain age group and risk, but not everybody is accessing that. We've reached the 80 percent mark but we still have 20 percent remaining."
A similar problem exists for HIV. "Not everybody is getting tested for HIV. Once you get tested, you can access treatment and probably prolong life," Ebrahim said.
None of this is going to happen overnight, he added. The consequences of "sexual behavior are totally preventable," he said. "If you have protected or safe sex, you are not going to have these."
More information
The CDC has more on sexually transmitted diseases.
Actually that was in my mind - I've seen various figures of how many millions or billions they'd like to reduce, to get the world population to a "manageable" size. Messing up "their" planet.
There are always too many "other" people for their liking. If they were the altruists they claim to be, they'd commit suicide en masse, just to help reduce the evil population number.
Un-freaking-believable. Definite case of wanting to usurp the real Owner.
Condoms are 99.8 per cent proof, which is pretty good going really. If I'm fortunate enough to sleep with 1,000 women, that means that I'm only vulnerable on two occasions. I'll take those odds.
Which other ramifications? I know devout Christians who have affairs and I've seen the ramifications when marriages drag on into unhappiness? I'm not telling everyone to put flowers in their hair and get funky, I'm just saying that telling people not to have sex is probably the worst method of contraception ever. People have been naughtily having sex for a very long time. In fact, many people are more eager to have sex when they've been told it's the wrong thing. Hence, the unfortunate incident in the bathtub with my flatmate's girlfriend.
Educating people on the dangers of STD's, particularly the less glamorous aspects ( warts and all if you like) should scare enough teenagers into condoms to start making a difference. Telling them not to have sex is doomed to failure.
*gets off soapbox*
We've been educating teenagers for about 20 years now and we've got a 30% illegitmacy rate. People don't like to use condoms so telling them to hasn't been very successful either.
People don't like to have pussy discharges either, but it's a regular feature on people who don't rubber up. We have a problem in the UK because all the education has focused on HIV and none of it on the lesser-known, but more virilent STDs.
Education certainly worked for me, I guess I can't speak for anyone else. I'm fastidious about sexual health, but I wouldn't be if no-one had ever talked to me about it.
Why wouldn't education for HIV (i.e. condoms) not work for STDs in general? The method of prevention is the same.
Because it's so amazingly difficult for a straight, non drug using man to contract HIV through normal sex (68 in the UK in 1997), that people just write off the risk. This is a decision they make shortly before contracting Syphilis!
I wonder why HIV rates are so much higher in Africa and STD rates so high in the West. If the level of promiscuity is the same, then why wouldn't Western HIV rates be the same? It's an interesting question.
"Telling them not to have sex is doomed to failure"
Oh dear. You going to Hell S;ipperduke!
You gonna burn!
love the tag line! ROFLOL
Strongly disagree. It worked well in this country for roughly 200 years. It is working great in Uganda and it works well in Christian communities.
If society had continued to support chastity before marriage and had continued to 'shun' those who were loose, we'd be in far better shape. Therefore it is important to mkae sure out children only move in circles where chastity is still values and enforced by the local society
More and more abstinence is being seen as the only correct answer to all of our sexual problems.
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