By SAMEH FAHMY
Gannett News Service

Fisk University freshman James Braxton says it’s not that college students don’t take sexually transmitted diseases seriously.

“They just don’t think it can happen to them,” he says.

As colleges and universities resume their STD-prevention efforts with the beginning of another school year, students say those messages are often forgotten.

Young adults and teens are more likely than any other age group to have multiple sex partners and to have unprotected sex, putting them at a high risk of contracting STDs, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While the CDC reports that rates of bacterial STDs, such as chlamydia, are generally declining, viral STDs, such as human papillomavirus (HPV) and herpes simplex virus, appear to have risen.

That shift from bacterial to viral STDs should give students great incentive to avoid getting one, says Dr. John Greene, director of student health and young adult medicine at Vanderbilt University.

Viral STDs

Greene credits prevention messages with the low rate of HIV infection among college students. That’s especially noteworthy because the CDC estimates that at least half of new HIV infections occur in people younger than 25, with most being infected through sex.

The human papillomavirus is the most common STD among youths. A 1998 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that during a three-year period, about 43 percent of sexually active female college students studied had been infected with HPV.

The alphabet soup of viral STDs isn’t limited to HIV and HPV. The CDC estimates that herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) is most commonly acquired during youth.

Bacterial STDs such as chlamydia and gonorrhea can be cured with antibiotics but, if left untreated, can cause problems later in life.

“I don’t think many students, particularly female students, have thought through that one of these infections can lead to problems with them getting pregnant later on in life,” says Rick Chapman, director of student health services at MTSU.

Untreated, chlamydia and gonorrhea can cause pelvic inflammatory disease, which can lead to infertility and tubal pregnancies.

Prevention and screening

Sexually active women should have a yearly Pap smear and pelvic exam regardless of their age, says Dr. Pat Spangler, Middle Tennessee State University’s medical director. During the exam, doctors look for signs of HPV and trichomoniasis, an STD caused by a microscopic parasite.

He urges both men and women to be screened for STDs before changing partners. Doctors use an oral test to screen for HIV, a blood test for syphilis and hepatitis and a cell sample for gonorrhea and herpes.

Your risk of contracting an STD increases exponentially with the more partners you have, so Spangler urges people to stay monogamous.