Condom use low, even among herpes patients: national survey.(Gynecology)

CHICAGO -- A new national survey shows condom use among sexually active adults is notably low, even among those with known genital herpes or other sexually transmitted diseases.

Clearly, the public has not heeded the message put forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's STD Treatment Guidelines 2002, which recommend routine use of latex condoms in the setting of genital herpes, Dr. Choy Y. Man said at the annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

He presented the results of a two-track national survey on condom use. A 35-item mailed questionnaire was completed by 1,181 representative adults matched for age and gender to the general U.S. population.

A similar 50-item questionnaire was completed by 1,033 adults with genital herpes simplex virus type 2, 76% of them women. Again, these respondents were demographically representative of the general adult population with genital herpes, as reflected in large databases.

Roughly half of the subjects in both the general population and the genital herpes population reported not having used a condom within the past 5 years.

Overall, 36% of respondents in the general adult population and 32% in the genital herpes group indicated they were sexually abstinent in the past month. Among individuals who were sexually active in the past month, however, 79% in the general population and 83% with herpes reported not having used a condom during that time period.

The mean proportion of sexual acts in the past month in which condoms were used was 19% for the general population and 13% in the genital herpes sample, said Dr. Man of GlaxoSmith Kline in Research Triangle Park, N.C., which sponsored the condom surveys.