NEWS: Sex Partners Get STD Alerts by E-mail

Brilliant idea for the embarrassed and those trying to avoid drama, but still care.

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Sex Partners Get STD Alerts by E-mail

By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2008; 6:00 PM

Copyright © 2008 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

TUESDAY, Oct. 21 (HealthDay News) -- Letting someone you've slept with know that you have inadvertently exposed them to a sexually transmitted disease can now be done with the click of a computer mouse.

A new report says 30,000 people have used an Internet service that allows them to alert their sex partners that they may have been infected with syphilis, gonorrhea, HIV or other diseases.

"This has been an innovative and effective way for us to enable people to communicate with their sex partners," said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, director of STD prevention and control services at the San Francisco Department of Health.

The inSPOT service, which was created in San Francisco in 2004, is now in place in several states, including Idaho, Louisiana, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington, among others. According to the report, the service "has the potential to be a national and international resource."

"We know inSPOT works," Klausner said. "I see patients, they come in and say they've been notified [about having an STD], and their contact is through inSPOT."

Typically, health departments in the United States only notify the sexual partners of people with STDs if they might be infected with syphilis, Klausner said. Officials don't try to track down the partners of people with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, or diseases such as gonorrhea and chlamydia, he said.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health and a non-profit group surveyed gay men in 2004 and found that most didn't notify casual sex partners when they were diagnosed with an STD. But the report said men "overwhelmingly said that if there were an easy, convenient and anonymous way to inform their partners of their potential disease exposure, they would use it."

And so the inSPOT service was born, first as a service for gay men and then for anyone. Users visit a Web site and click through a form that allows them to submit the e-mail address of a sex partner and specify what disease or diseases the person may have been exposed to.

The person potentially exposed to an STD will then get an e-mail with the subject line, "E-card from a concerned friend re: your health via inSPOT."

People who send the messages can choose to be anonymous or include their name. They also get to choose images to appear on the e-cards, including a photo of the words "I'm so sorry" on a piece of paper.

"We're living in a new world of Internet communication," Klausner said. "Most people are online every day. This Internet communication tool affords people a way to send a message anonymously."

According to the new report, published in the October issue of PLoS Medicine, 15 percent of the e-cards in 2006 and 2007 warned recipients of gonorrhea infection. The percentages for other diseases were 15 percent for syphilis, 9 percent for HIV and 12 percent for chlamydia. Almost half of the cards warned of other diseases, including "crabs" and hepatitis.

Since 2004, 30,000 people have sent nearly 50,000 e-cards, the report said.

It's possible for people to use the messages to harass or frighten other people. There's no way to confirm that those who receive messages are actually in danger of infection. Still, there's little indication that people have abused the system, at least in San Francisco, Klausner said.

"I've probably gotten four e-mails from people who have been upset because they think they shouldn't have gotten this card, someone misused it," Klausner said. "They couldn't believe something this serious could so easily have the potential for misuse."

It's not clear if the notification service actually helps reduce sexually transmitted disease.

"The real test of this or any approach, including the traditional ones, is their effect on transmission," said Dr. Richard Rothenberg, a professor at Georgia State University's Institute of Public Health, who studies partner notification.

However, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to study the impact on health because the service is confidential, Rothenberg said. "I think we, and the authors, must be content with the idea that this appears to be an acceptable method to fulfill the moral imperative of notification, and it has a chance to be a better approach than what we currently do," he said.

More information

Here's more on the inSPOT service.

Source: http://www.healthcentral.com/genital-herpes/news-272894-31.html

NEWS: Study finds 1 in 4 US teens has a STD

This is sooo disturbing. Mothers, PLEASE educate your kids...schools don't do it!! It's up to you to teach your daughter's that their bodies are temples!!

Read the horrible article below! It's such a shame!! Teach your children for F's sake!!

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Study finds 1 in 4 US teens has a STD

By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer March 11, 2008

CHICAGO - At least one in four teenage American girls has a sexually transmitted disease, suggests a first-of-its-kind federal study that startled some adolescent-health experts.

Some doctors said the numbers might be a reflection of both abstinence-only sex education and teens' own sense of invulnerabilty. Because some sexually transmitted infections can cause infertility and cancer, U.S. health officials called for better screening, vaccination and prevention.

Only about half of the girls in the study acknowledged having sex. Some teens define sex as only intercourse, yet other types of intimate behavior including oral sex can spread some diseases.

Among those who admitted having sex, the rate was even more disturbing — 40 percent had an STD.

"This is pretty shocking," said Dr. Elizabeth Alderman, an adolescent medicine specialist at Montefiore Medical Center's Children's Hospital in New York.

"To talk about abstinence is not a bad thing," but teen girls — and boys too — need to be informed about how to protect themselves if they do have sex, Alderman said.

The overall STD rate among the 838 girls in the study was 26 percent, which translates to more than 3 million girls nationwide, researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. They released the results Tuesday at an STD prevention conference in Chicago.

"Those numbers are certainly alarming," said sex education expert Nora Gelperin, who works with a teen-written Web site called sexetc.org. She said they reflect "the sad state of sex education in our country."

"Sexuality is still a very taboo subject in our society," she said. "Teens tell us that they can't make decisions in the dark and that adults aren't properly preparing them to make responsible decisions."

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the study shows that "the national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure, and teenage girls are paying the real price."

Similar claims were made last year when the government announced the teen birth rate rose between 2005 and 2006, the first increase in 15 years.

The new study by CDC researcher Dr. Sara Forhan relied on slightly older data. It is an analysis of nationally representative records on girls ages 14 to 19 who participated in a 2003-04 government health survey.

The teens were tested for four infections: human papillomavirus, or HPV, which can cause cervical cancer and affected 18 percent of girls studied; chlamydia, which affected 4 percent; trichomoniasis, 2.5 percent; and genital herpes, 2 percent.

Dr. John Douglas, director of the CDC's division of STD prevention, said the results are the first to examine the combined national prevalence of common sexually transmitted diseases among adolescent girls. He said the data, now a few years old, likely reflect current prevalence rates.

Disease rates were significantly higher among black girls — nearly half had at least one STD, versus 20 percent among both whites and Mexican-Americans.

HPV, the cancer-causing virus, can also cause genital warts but often has no symptoms. A vaccine targeting several HPV strains recently became available, but Douglas said it probably hasn't yet had much impact on HPV prevalence rates in teen girls.

The CDC recommends the three-dose HPV vaccine for girls ages 11-12 and catch-up shots for ages 13-26.

Chlamydia, which often has no symptoms but can lead to infertility, can be treated with antibiotics. The CDC recommends annual chlamydia screening for all sexually active women under age 25. Trichomoniasis, also treatable with antibiotics, can cause abnormal discharge and painful urination. Genital herpes can cause blisters but often has no symptoms. It's not curable but medicine can help.

The CDC's Dr. Kevin Fenton said given the dangers of some STDs, "screening, vaccination and other prevention strategies for sexually active women are among our highest public health priorities."

Douglas said screening tests are underused in part because many teens don't think they're at risk, but also, some doctors mistakenly think: "Sexually transmitted diseases don't happen to the kinds of patients I see."

Teens need to hear the dual message that STDs can be prevented by abstinence and condoms, said Dr. Ellen Kruger, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans.

"You've got to hammer at them," with appropriate information at each stage of teen development to make sure it sinks in, she said.

She said there are a lot of myths out there, too — many sexually active teens think the withdrawal method will protect them, or that douching with Coca-Cola will kill STD germs.

Dr. Margaret Blythe, an adolescent medicine specialist at Indiana University School of Medicine, said some doctors hesitate to discuss STDs with teen patients or offer screening because of confidentiality concerns, knowing parents would have to be told of the results.

Blythe, who heads an American Academy of Pediatrics committee on adolescence, noted that the academy supports confidential teen screening.

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On the Net:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov

American Academy of Pediatrics: http://www.aap.org