Young People With STDs May Not Be Honest Enough to Admit They Had Sex

Many young people suffering sexually transmitted diseases may not be speaking the truth about their sex lives. Data on 14,012 young adults in their early 20s, were analyzed by researchers at Emory University in Atlanta . The young adults had answered a computer-assisted interviewing survey and also provided a urine specimen to ascertain the presence of three common STDs: chlamydia, gonorrhea, and trichomoniasis.

The analysis revealed that  more than 10% of the young people diagnosed with at least one of the STDs said that they did not have penile/vaginal sexual intercourse during the past 12 months. This surely points out that routine screening of STDs is a must to cut transmission of diseases. This also means that doctors must do much more that just quizzing young people about their sex lives.

 “Importantly, our findings reveal that if pediatricians and adolescent medicine physicians do not test all young people, there are likely a substantial number of missed cases of STDs that will go undiagnosed, untreated, and spread to future sex partners,” the researchers said.



Source-Medindia