Skip to main content

CDC: Little Change in Risky Teen Sex


July 27, 2012 — Progress in getting teens to have safer sex largely has stalled over the last decade, a new CDC study suggests.
Nearly half of high school students (47%) have had sex, according to the 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). That's almost the same percentage reported in the 2001 survey -- 46%.
That means the decline in sexually active teens seen in the 1990s -- from a 1991 high of 54% -- is now stalled. So are other markers of safer sex (or abstinence) among teens:
  • 34% of high school students had sex in the preceding three months. There's been little decline since the 1990s saw a slight decline from 38% in 1991.
  • 15% of high school students had four or more sex partners, stable since 14% in 1991 but not as high as the 19% seen in 1991.
  • 60% of high school students used a condom the last time they had sex.
"We have to step back and think about the lack of urgency about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the U.S.," Kevin Fenton, MD, director of the CDC's AIDS center, said at the International AIDS Conference. "Fewer Americans say HIV is a health concern. This influences the vigor and commitment that schools and communities have in providing sexual health information to children. ... We have to generate a new sense of urgency. Part of that will be getting back on track reducing HIV behavior in young people."
One bright point in the study findings is that the sexual risk behaviors of African-American teens are dropping to levels similar to those of white and Hispanic teens. In fact, African-American teens are even more likely than other teens to use condoms.
But rates of sexual initiation, multiple lifetime sex partners, and recent sex remain higher among African-American teens.
"Age at first intercourse has not changed since we have been tracking it," study leader Laura Kann, PhD, said at the AIDS conference. "It still is usually about age 16 for boys and for girls."
The YRBS survey includes a large national sample of high school students, who answer very personal questions anonymously and in private. Pregnancy and STD data suggest that kids tend to tell the truth on YRBS questionnaires.
SOURCES:
News conference at International AIDS Conference, July 24, 2011.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Contact Precautions May Have Unintended Consequences

Contact precautions, including gloves, gowns, and isolated rooms, have helped stem the transmission of hospital pathogens but have also had some negative consequences, according to findings from a new study. Healthcare worker (HCWs) visited patients on contact precautions less frequently than other patients and spent less time with those patients when they did visit, report Daniel J. Morgan, MD, from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs (VA) Maryland Health Care System, Baltimore, and colleagues. Moreover, patients on contact precautions also received fewer outside visitors. "Less contact with HCWs suggests that other unintended consequences of contact precautions still exist," Dr. Morgan and coauthors write. "The resulting decrease in HCW contact may lead to increased adverse events and a lower quality of patient care due to less consistent patient monitoring and poorer adherence to standard adverse event prevention methods (such...
Post a Comment
Read more

Antidepressants Linked to Higher Diabetes Risk in Kids

Pediatric patients who use antidepressants may have an elevated risk for type 2 diabetes, the authors of a new study report. In a retrospective cohort study of more than 119,000 youths 5 to 20 years of age, the risk for incident type 2 diabetes was nearly twice as high among current users of certain types of antidepressants as among former users, Mehmet Burcu, PhD, and colleagues report in an article  published online October 16 in  JAMA Pediatrics . The risk intensified with increasing duration of use, greater cumulative doses, and higher daily doses of these antidepressants. The findings point to a growing need for closer monitoring of these products, including greater balancing of risks and benefits, in the pediatric population, the authors caution. They undertook the study because, despite growing evidence of an association between antidepressant use and an increased risk for type 2 diabetes in adults, similar research in pediatric patients was scarce. "To our know...
Post a Comment
Read more

FDA Decision Delayed for Truvada in HIV PrEP

June 11, 2012 — The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has delayed its decision on allowing the use of tenofovir disoproxil fumarate/emtricitabine ( Truvada , Gilead) as preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) so that the proposed risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS) can be reviewed. In early May, the FDA's Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee  strongly backed  approval of the first-ever drug for the prevention of sexually acquired HIV-1 infection. However, concerns by the panel at the time included that people may neglect condom use if they feel they are protected by PrEP. Panelists were also concerned that uninfected people taking PrEP who become infected with HIV may not switch to a 3-drug regimen as recommended. According to the company, the FDA has postponed the target date to September 14 so it can review Gilead's REMS plan to help ensure that patients will not misuse the drug. The committee's recommendation for supplemental approval of tenofovir/emtricit...
Post a Comment
Read more