Authors: Ebrahim, Shahul H.
Peterman, Thomas H.
` Zaidi, Akbar A.
Kamb, Mary L.
Sexually transmitted disease seems to remain uncontrolled although millions of cases occur annually in the United States. The advent of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), which is also a sexually transmitted disease, has not altered this situation. The major portion of federal funding for sexually transmitted diseases is allocated to a search for an AIDS vaccine or cure. State health department funding for sexually transmitted diseases, although only a small fraction of the $1.3 billion AIDS research budget of the National Institutes of Health, is largely consumed by AIDS. A single adequately funded sexually transmitted disease control program that applies well-established public health principles for the control of communicable diseases would make sense. However, a consensus to develop and support such a program does not seem to exist in the United States.
A case-control study was performed in the year 1997, in order to assess risk factors for repeated sexually transmitted diseases. The study consisted of 101 patients who had had sexually transmitted diseases 3 or more times during their lives and 182 people who had no history of sexually transmitted diseases at all. The subjects all attended the City Department for Skin and Venereal Diseases in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, from June 1997 to April 1998. And as a result according to multivariate logistic regression analysis, sexually transmitted diseases repeaters, in comparison with the controls (the ones who didn’t have std), were older, more frequently divorced and widowed and without a regular partner, had more sexual partners and more sexual intercourse, and had more frequent sexual contact with people on the same day as meeting them. They also consumed alcohol, used sedatives and were prosecuted for criminal offences more frequently than the controls. The results of this study support the hypothesis that sexually transmitted diseases repeaters are different from their controls in terms of their behavioral and social characteristics.
Source: American Journal of Public Health;Jun97, Vol. 87 Issue 6, p938-944, 7p, 2 charts, 2 graphs
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