One in 4 Teen Girls Has a Sexually Transmitted Disease

Greatest burden falls on African-American adolescents, CDC
researchers find

By Steven Reinberg, HealthDay Reporter
HealthDay
health.msn.com
Tuesday, March 11, 2008

(HealthDay News) - More than 3 million teenaged girls have
at least one sexually transmitted disease (STD), a new
government study suggests.

The most severely affected are African-American teens. In
fact, 48 percent of African-American teenaged girls have an
STD, compared with 20 percent of white teenaged girls.

"What we found is alarming," Dr. Sara Forhan, from the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a
teleconference Tuesday. "One in four female adolescents in
the U.S. has at least one of the four most common STDs that
affects women."

"These numbers translate into 3.2 million young women
nationwide who are infected with an STD," Forhan said.
"This means that far too many young women are at risk of
the serious health effects of untreated STDs, including
infertility and cervical cancer."

These common STDs include human papillomavirus (HPV),
chlamydia, herpes simplex virus and trichomoniasis, Forhan
said.

Forhan announced the results as part of the CDC's 2008
National STD Prevention Conference, in Chicago.

"These findings are really giving us a lot of pause about
how we provide care to adolescent girls who are sexually
active," said Dr. Elizabeth Alderman, an adolescent
medicine specialist at Children's Hospital at Montefiore in
New York City and chairperson of the Executive Committee of
the Section of Adolescent Health of the American Academy of
Pediatrics. "The numbers are really astonishing."

Forhan noted that most of the burden of STDs falls on young
African-American women. "Among African-American teenagers,
about one in two were affected compared to one in five
white teens," she said.

In terms of the racial disparity, "it's what we've always
seen, which is very unfortunate," Alderman said.

In the study, Forhan's team collected data on 838 girls
aged 14 to 19 who took part in the 2003-2004 National
Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The study did not
include syphilis, gonorrhea or HIV, as earlier studies
found very low prevalence of these diseases in this age
group.

HPV and chlamydia are the most common STDs found among
teenage girls, Forhan said. "Almost one in five overall had
a strain of HPV associated with cervical cancer or genital
warts," she said.

"We need to be screening adolescent girls who are sexually
active and providing them with HPV vaccine," Alderman said.
"The recommendations are to screen sexually active girls,
but many girls don't disclose to their health-care provider
that they are sexually active, even when asked," she said.

As for chlamydia, 4 percent of teenaged girls had this STD,
Forhan said. "The majority of chlamydia infections do not
have symptoms. If left untreated, it can lead to pelvic
inflammatory disease, which leaves these young women at
risk for atopic pregnancy, chronic pelvic pain or
infertility," she said.

In addition, the study found that 2.9 percent of young
women had trichomoniasis, and 2 percent were infected with
genital herpes, Forhan said.

According to Forhan, about 50 percent of the teens reported
having sex, and the prevalence of STDs in this group was 40
percent. "Even for young women with only one reported
lifetime sexual partner, one in five had an STD," she
noted.

"If you choose to be sexually active, you need to protect
yourself and be screened for these infections," Alderman
said. "And all girls between the ages of 11 and 26 should
get vaccinated for HPV."

Among women with an STD, 15 percent had more than one
infection, Forhan added.

"These data provide a clearest picture to date of the
overall burden of STDs in adolescent women in the United
States," Forhan said. "The study also underscores the
importance of addressing racial disparities in STD rates
among young women."

Race itself is not a risk factor for STDs, Forhan said.
However, factors such as limited access to health care,
poverty, community prevalence of STDs, and misperceptions
about individual risk are some of the reasons that STD
rates are particularly high among African-Americans, she
said.

More information

For more on STDs, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
http://www.cdc.gov/STD/

Content by:
HealthDay

SOURCES: March 11, 2008, teleconference with Sara Forhan,
M.D., Division of STD Prevention, U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, Atlanta; Elizabeth Alderman, M.D.,
adolescent medicine specialist, Children's Hospital at
Montefiore, New York City, and chairwoman, Executive
Committee of the Section of Adolescent Health, American
Academy of Pediatrics; 2008 National STD Prevention
Conference, Chicago

More at:
http://health.msn.com/health-topics/sexual-health/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid
=100197966

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