One in 4 Teen Girls Has a Sexually Transmitted Disease (HealthDay)

TUESDAY, March 11 (HealthDay News) -- More than 3 millionteenaged girls have at least one sexually transmitted disease (STD), a newgovernment study suggests.

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

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

"These numbers translate into 3.2 million young women nationwide whoare infected with an STD," Forhan said. "This means that far too manyyoung 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, herpessimplex virus and trichomoniasis, Forhan said.

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

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

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

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

In the study, Forhan's team collected data on 838 girls aged 14 to 19who took part in the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition ExaminationSurvey. The study did not include syphilis, gonorrhea or HIV, as earlierstudies 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 associatedwith cervical cancer or genital warts," she said.

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

As for chlamydia, 4 percent of teenaged girls had this STD, Forhansaid. "The majority of chlamydia infections do not have symptoms. If leftuntreated, it can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, which leaves theseyoung women at risk for atopic pregnancy, chronic pelvic pain orinfertility," she said.

In addition, the study found that 2.9 percent of young women hadtrichomoniasis, and 2 percent were infected with genital herpes, Forhansaid.

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 youngwomen with only one reported lifetime sexual partner, one in five had anSTD," she noted.

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

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

"These data provide a clearest picture to date of the overall burden ofSTDs in adolescent women in the United States," Forhan said. "The studyalso underscores the importance of addressing racial disparities in STDrates among young women."

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

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