One in Four Teen Age Girls Have an STD

One in four teenage girls in the United States -- and nearly half of African-American girls -- has at least one sexually transmitted disease, according to a study released Tuesday.

Those numbers translate into an estimated 3.2 million adolescent females infected with one of the four most common STDs -- many of whom may not even know they have a disease or that they are passing it to their sex partners."What we found is alarming," said Dr. Sara Forhan, a researcher with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the study's lead author. "This means that far too many young women are at risk for the serious health effects of untreated STDs, including infertility and cervical cancer."

The study's authors analyzed data on 838 girls between the ages of 14 and 19 who participated in the 2003-04 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, an annual study assesses a broad range of health issues.For the analysis, the teens were tested for human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, trichomoniasis and herpes. By far, the most common sexually transmitted disease was HPV. Of those infected, 15 percent had more than one STD.

"It shows that what people have always suspected is true," said Dr. Emily Erbelding, an infectious diseases specialist at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. "Sexually transmitted infections have been called a hidden epidemic because a lot of these conditions are going to be asymptomatic when they're diagnosed but they're highly common."The study did not include teenage boys. The paper is being presented Wednesday at a CDC conference on STD prevention in Chicago.

Forhan said she was surprised to see how readily the risk to young women appears. Of those who said they had one sexual partner in their lifetime, the prevalence of STDs was 20 percent, she said.

While parents may be surprised by the study, it's a reflection of what doctors have been seeing in their practices in recent years, said Dr. Ligia Peralta of the University of Maryland Hospital for Children in Baltimore.

She said parents need to know that the average age of a girl's first sexual intercourse is 15.

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