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Sexually Transmitted Infection In Women
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Sexually Transmitted Infections
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Sexually transmitted diseases are infections of your reproductive organs. Sexually transmitted diseases are very serious. They can make you very, very sick, and can leave you sterile. Some STIs, such as HIV, are deadly, and some, such as herpes, are incurable.
STIs are a common problem. Approximately 12 million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases are diagnosed each year in the United States. Between 25-50 percent of Americans will contract an STI at some point in their lives. Women account for about half of all sexually transmitted infections that occur each year, and they suffer more frequent and severe long-term consequences than men. Most STIs are more easily transmitted to women than to men. Women are twice as likely as men to get gonorrhea, hepatitis B, and HIV (AIDS). While many people associate getting an STI with being young, postmenopausal women with low estrogen levels are actually at greater risk of these infections invading easily torn vaginal tissue. Women with disabilities have the same rates of sexually transmitted diseases as other women.
However, the good news is that you can protect yourself against STIs. In addition, some bacterial STIs, like gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis, are relatively easy to cure with antibiotics if they are caught early. Viral STIs, like genital herpes, genital warts, hepatitis B, and HIV, cannot be cured; however, the symptoms can be treated and controlled.
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When you have genital, anal, or oral contact with a person who has an STI, you can become infected. You only have to have contact with an infected area of another person to become sick yourself. This means you can get an STI without actually having intercourse. If the blood of people with HIV or hepatitis B gets into your body, you can become infected also.
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Be careful about your partners. Ask your partner about his or her sexual history. If you think you or your partner has a sexually transmitted infection, you need to see a health care provider for testing, counseling, and treatment. Remember that your partner can be infected and NOT LOOK SICK. Furthermore, an infected partner will not always know or disclose that he or she is infected with an STI. You should look closely to see if your partner has any sign of an STI -- a rash, a sore, redness, or discharge in the genital area. If you see anything you're worried about, don't have sex with that person!
Use a latex condom every time you have sexual contact. While they are not 100 percent effective, condoms greatly reduce your risk. A 1993 study showed that using condoms every time prevented HIV transmission for all but two out of 171 women with male partners who had HIV. However, eight out of 55 women became infected when their partners did not use a condom every time.
Use a foam, cream, or jelly with spermicide. These chemicals kill most STI organisms. Remember not to use a petroleum based lubricant like Vaseline or baby oil with a latex condom. It will cause the condom to dissolve!
Don't share vibrators or other sex toys.
Be careful about the alcohol or drugs you take. Alcohol and drugs are often factors when people have risky sex because they weaken good judgment and self-control. Don't make a mistake that could kill you because of alcohol and drugs.
Get a Hepatitis B immunization. The vaccine is safe and effective. Hepatitis B is a serious and sometimes fatal sexually transmitted infection.
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What Are the Symptoms of an STI?
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A woman with disabilities who has a damaging STI may have no symptoms at all. Thus, if you have engaged in unprotected sex and think you might have an STI, you should go to a health care provider to be tested.
If you have a spinal cord injury and you get an STI, you may also have symptoms and signs of autonomic dysreflexia. If you are having these kinds of problems and think you may have an STI, always tell your health care provider. An STI can cause the following symptoms in the genital area. If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, you should see your health care provider right away.
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An STI may also cause symptoms that do not show up in the genital area, but affect your whole body. If any of the following symptoms persist, you should see your health care provider. These symptoms need to be treated, regardless of whether or not they are due to an STI.
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Why Is It Sometimes Hard to Tell if a Woman With a Disability Has an STI?
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For several reasons, STIs often go undetected or diagnosis is delayed in women with disabilities, leading to preventable pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility.
Women with disabilities may not detect signs and symptoms of STIs, or they may mistake them for urinary tract infections, if they are unable to see them or feel discomfort from them.
Doctors who assume women with disabilities are not sexually active may fail to screen for STIs or educate them about safe sex practices.
Women with disabilities are discouraged from getting screened for STIs by inaccessible doctors' offices, difficulty getting onto the examination table, or previous experience with doctors not knowing how to handle disability-related symptoms during the exam, such as spasticity, imbalance, and autonomic dysreflexia.
Women with disabilities may not take medication prescribed for their STIs because they cannot swallow pills or open the bottle, and no alternatives were offered.
Presence of an STI may be a sign of sexual abuse, particularly in women with cognitive impairments, who live in institutions, or who need assistance with personal care.
Prostate Cancer Linked To Sexually Transmitted Disease
Men with prostate cancer who were previously infected with the sexually transmitted germ Trichomonas vaginalis are more likely to have an aggressive form of the cancer, compared with men who never had the STD, a new study says.
Researchers say trichomonas, an STD, is most common in men ages 25 to 39.
The germ, a type of parasite, can infect the prostate and may cause inflammation that spurs the growth of prostate cancer later in life, says senior author Lorelei Mucci, Ph.D., an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.
"Our underlying hypothesis is around inflammation and, in particular, we believe that inflammation from a variety of sources is leading to prostate cancer progression," she says.
In the study, Mucci and colleagues compared 673 prostate cancer patients to 673 men without prostate cancer, and tested their blood for signs of a past infection with trichomonas. All the men were enrolled in the Physician's Health Study, according to the report published this week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
They found that roughly one in five men had been infected with trichomonas at some point in his life. Men infected with trichomonas were no more likely to develop prostate cancer in general. But those with a past trichomonas infection were two to three times more likely to develop an aggressive and potentially life-threatening form of prostate cancer.
Trichomonas affects 174 million people around the world each year, and, at any given time, about 3 percent of younger men are infected with trichomonas; it is most common in men ages 25 to 39.
However, trichomonas is an STD that's probably on more women's radars than men's because women are more likely to get symptoms such as discharge and itching. Health.Com: How to protect yourself from HPV
Only one out of four men with trichomonas develops symptoms, and, with time, the infection often goes away on its own. (The STD can be cured quickly with antibiotics.)
"I think the only time men really seek any medical intervention is if their partner has been diagnosed and then they may go and get treated as well," says Mucci. "I think the general feeling has been that this is an acute infection, it will eventually clear itself, and it doesn't seem to be doing any real harm; but in this case it may actually be doing harm--you're just not seeing the harm until 20 years in the future."
Infections are just one factor that researchers are examining as potential players in the growth of prostate cancer, and others--such as dietary choices--are thought to influence prostate cancer risk as well. Health.Com: 10 questions to ask a new partner
"We are pretty confident that diet has an impact," says Dr. Peter C. Albertsen, of the University of Connecticut Health Center, in Farmington. Prostate cancer is rare in Asian countries but relatively common in Western nations, and researchers feel it's probably due to some component of the Western diet, says Albertsen, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study.
"What this study explores and similar studies are exploring is whether there are potentially infectious causes that result in prostate cancer going from a relatively dormant disease to one that's clinically significant," says Albertsen. "This study raises the issue that a common bug, Trichomonas vaginalis, could be such an agent."
While the link to prostate cancer may sound surprising, there are other cancers caused by STDs. For example, cervical cancer in women is caused by the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV). (However, HPV is a common infection and many women who are infected with the virus never develop cancer, which is relatively rare.) Health.Com: How HPV causes cervical cancer and abnormal pap smears
"[Although] there is some evidence that suggests that the number of partners that a man has had over his lifetime is associated with increased risk of developing prostate cancer," says Mucci, the relationship is not as clear-cut for prostate cancer as it is for cervical cancer. There is no strong indicator that an STD causes prostate cancer, and researchers suspect that trichomonas is just one inflammation-causing factor that may contribute to the cancer or make it grow faster.
"We think that inflammation is what's important," she says. "This inflammation may result from trichomonas, a dietary factor, or it could result from oxidative stress from something like smoking or other factors." Health.Com: Dating dilemmas -- 8 tips for telling your partner a health secret
Either way, it's too soon to make any changes in the testing or treatment of either prostate cancer or trichomonas, both experts say. "What needs to happen is a few more researchers need to tackle this issue to either nail this down as a true relationship or dispense with it," says Albertsen. Health.Com: Who's most at risk for STDs?
However, it's an important issue to consider, he says.
"Right now if you asked if the average urologist or internist, 'Does Trichomonas vaginalis lead to prostate cancer?', the answer would be no, and in fact this study doesn't prove a cause-and-effect relationship," he says. "But if we begin to see that infections in general can be associated with prostate cancer, we might begin to take a new view on this disease and the appropriate treatment leading up to it."
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Copyright Health Magazine 2009
All About Prostate Cancer • Sexually Transmitted Diseases
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