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Risky sexual behaviour, such as having unprotected sex with multiple partners puts people at risk of catching sexually transmitted infections, but not as much as the characteristics of their sexual partners, according to a new study.
The findings, which University of Florida and University of Pittsburgh researchers report in the April issue of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, could assist healthcare providers when screening patients for STD risks.
University of Florida College of Medicine, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Health policy research, Stephanie A. S. Staras, said:
If you are choosing high-risk partners, you are much more likely to have an STD, even when we account for your condom-use patterns. The theory is simple: You need to have sex with someone who has an STD to get an STD. Based on the prevalence of STDs in the United States, it seems like the public may not fully understand their risk.
The study examined the sexual activities, partner characteristics and STD diagnoses of 412 subjects between the ages of 15 and 24. Amongst the subjects whose partners were categorized as high-risk, half were diagnosed with an STD. By comparison, only 40 percent of the people whose own behaviours were labelled as high-risk were diagnosed with an STD.
University of Florida researchers measured five specific characteristics to gauge how risky certain partners were. The characteristics studied included whether their partner has a problem with marijuana or alcohol, was at least five years older or younger, had been in jail, had sex with other people in the past year or had been treated for an STD in the past year.
The researchers then created a composite, totalling up the number of negative partner characteristics for each subject and comparing them against the number of each person’s own individual risky behaviours, which ranged from how often they used condoms to how many people they had sex with.
Overall, researchers found considering all of the partner characteristics together was the strongest predictor for STDs. People whose partners had five or more risk characteristics were three times more likely to have an STD than those whose partners had no more than two characteristics.
Of these characteristics, the most prescient were if a partner had already had an STD and if a couple had an age difference of more than five years. Subjects whose partners were five years older or younger than themselves were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with an STD than participants whose partners were about the same age, the researchers found.
Lead author of the study, Professor Staras said:
Healthcare providers usually ask patients about their own sexual behaviours, but inquiring only about a person’s own behaviours may cause some patients to slip through the cracks. For example, some subjects in the study reported very low-risk behaviours but were having sex with very high-risk partners.
Adding a few simple questions about partner characteristics during STD screenings could help providers catch more patients who need to be tested and educated about condom use and other protective measures.
Partner selection is an area of STD prevention that could complement what we are already doing with promoting condom use, and could possibly really help people. If somehow we could convince individuals to incorporate this information in a meaningful way into their decision-making, then we could reduce STDs.
Professor Richard A. Crosby, Chairman of the Department of health behaviour at the University of Kentucky and a Co-director of the Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention, who was not involved with this study, said:
It’s important for people to remember that the risks mentioned in the study are just generalizations, not set-in-stone giveaways for STDs.
From a practical and prevention perspective, we still need to rely on people using valid methods of protection to avoid being infected or infecting.
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