Teens Neglect Condom Use in 'Serious' Relationships

Teens Neglect Condom Use in 'Serious' Relationships
08.23.06, 12:00 AM ET

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 23 (HealthDay News) -- Teens are slightly more likely to use condoms when they have sex with a casual partner, compared to a partner they are more serious about, a new study finds.

"Unfortunately, this reveals that teens may overestimate the safety of using condoms most of the time with a casual partner and underestimate the risk of unprotected sex with a serious partner," study lead author Celia Lescano, of the Bradley Hasbro Children's Hospital Research Center and Brown Medical School, in Providence, R.I., said in a prepared statement.

As reported in the September issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, the study included more than 1,300 sexually active young people, ages 15 to 21, in Miami, Atlanta, and Providence. The participants were divided into two groups: 65 percent who said they'd had sex with their main partner only in the previous 90 days and 35 percent who said they'd had sex with at least one casual partner during that time.

Among those in the casual-partner group, 21.5 percent said they had had unprotected sex within the previous 90 days, compared to 19.2 percent of those in the main-partner-only group.

"We can conclude that, given these high rates of unprotected sex, teens in both groups may be at risk for contracting HIV and sexually-transmitted diseases," Lescano said.

Females were more likely to report main partners, while males were much more likely to report having casual partners. Those with casual partners reported greater substance abuse and riskier behaviors. Young people who said their main partners had negative reactions about condom use were less likely to use condoms, the study found.

"This study demonstrates the importance of understanding an adolescent's perception of partner types in order to design effective [HIV] interventions," Lescano said

Many Teens Use Condoms Incorrectly

Aug. 9, 2006 -- Many teens put condoms on after starting sex or take them off before it's over -- thus risking sexually transmitted diseases.

The finding comes from a survey of 1,373 British teens by Bethan Hatherallof London's National Children's Bureau, and colleagues.

About half the teens in the survey said they had ever engaged in vaginal sex. Nearly two-thirds of these sexually active teens said they had used condoms during the most recent episode.

Does that mean they are protected against sexually transmitted diseases? Not necessarily. Hatherall and colleagues find that 6% of the kids (who had reported that they used a condom the last time they had sex) said they put the condom on after vaginal penetration -- and 6% said they continued vaginal penetration after condom removal.


Diaries provided by 74 of these sexually active kids gave the researchers a closer look. As it turns out, nearly a third of the kids put condoms on too late at least one time during the six-month diary period. And nearly one in 10 took them off too soon.

This means that simply telling teens to use condoms isn't going to help many of them avoid spreading sexually transmitted diseases.

"The reduced effectiveness of condoms as a method of sexually transmitted disease prevention when used incorrectly may result in users losing confidence in what should be a highly effective method," Hatherall and colleagues conclude.

The findings appear in the early online edition of the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections.

SOURCE: Hatherall, B. Sexually Transmitted Infections, early online edition, 2006.