Unsafe sex burdens health in U.S.

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The public health burden related to unsafe sexual activity is three times higher in the U.S. than in other developed nations, according to researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nearly all the premature deaths and adverse health consequences are preventable, the investigators maintain.

Dr. Shahul H. Ebrahim and colleagues in Atlanta, Georgia, point out that sexual behavior can lead to a variety of harmful consequences, such as unintended pregnancies and infections. They compiled data from the U.S. Burden of Disease Study for 1996 to estimate mortality and disability attributable to sexual behavior.

Included in their calculations were all major sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and the proportion of conditions such as infertility, abortion, HIV and viral hepatitis that is attributable to unsafe sex.

As reported in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections, they found that nearly 20 million cases of adverse health conditions (7532 per 100,000 population) and 30,000 deaths (1.3 percent of U.S. deaths) were a consequence of unsafe sexual behavior.

The majority of this public health burden falls on women - 62 percent of behavior-related adverse health events. Cervical cancer was the leading cause of sex-related mortality among women, followed by HIV.

Men suffered the majority of deaths (66 percent), primarily from HIV.

“Interventions among adolescents to delay age at first sexual contact, widespread Papanicolaou testing and use of hepatitis B vaccine, screening and treatment of curable STDs, and correct and consistent use of condoms and contraceptives can reduce the sexual behavior related public health burden substantially,” Ebrahim’s group writes.

SOURCE: Sexually Transmitted Infections, February 2005.

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