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One In Four U.S. Teenage Girls Has An STD Study Finds

March 12, 2008

For too many teenage girls, the numbers released Tuesday hold the threat of infertility and cancer.

For the experienced U.S. health experts who reported them, the data were alarming and disappointing.

More than one in four teenage girls in the U.S. has a sexually transmitted disease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

That translates to 3.2 million girls ages 14 to 19 who are infected with human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, herpes simplex virus, or trichomoniasis. Among girls with STDs, 15 percent had more than one.

The numbers came as no surprise to Daryl Lynch. As a physician in the Teen Clinic of Children’s Mercy Hospital, he deals with the children behind the statistics every day.

“We have historically seen lots and lots of STDs among teens in Kansas City,” Lynch said. “It’s a very sexually active, sexually promiscuous crowd that doesn’t practice safe sex. And therein lies the problem.”

Many adolescents have the attitude that nothing can hurt them, Lynch said.

“So motivating them to use condoms, it’s a tough sell,” he said. “Even among teens who have had an STD.”

While many of these diseases are also common among teenage boys, the researchers focused on girls because females are at higher risk of the most severe consequences of sexually transmitted diseases.

“What these numbers tell us is that we need to do a better job on lots of different fronts,” said John M. Douglas Jr., director of CDC’s Division of STD Prevention. “Better education of our young people, better promotion of prevention practices and better … screening practices.”

The CDC report, issued at a conference in Chicago, is the first national look at the combined prevalence of these infections among teenage girls, lead author Sara Forhan said.

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