October 7, 1999 WASHINGTON (AP) — An estimated 17 million American women are at risk of a sexually transmitted disease because either they or their partners recently have had sex with someone else, a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute says.
Some 3.5 million women are not aware of the risk because they believe they are in a mutually monogamous relationship, the study said.
But contrary to popular perceptions, the proportion of sexually active Americans who have had only one sex partner in a given year — at least three-quarters — has not changed significantly in a decade, the study said.
The more sexual partners a person has, the more likely he or she is to encounter someone infected with the AIDS virus or other sexually transmitted disease. Even someone who has had only one sexual partner can be placed at risk if that partner has ever had sex with someone else — one reason health experts recommend using condoms.
Guttmacher researcher Lawrence Finer combed three federal behavior surveys to estimate how many women are at risk.
Some 5.4 million women ages 15-44 report having had more than one sex partner in the previous year, concluded a 1995 national study.
About 15 percent of women in that study also reported that a husband or boyfriend had had another sexual partner during that time. But another study found 23 percent of men reported more than one sexual partner in a year.
Finer combined the data to conclude that some women were being cheated on, and found about a third of sexually active women are at risk of disease because of either their own or their partners' sexual history.
The study is clearly an estimate, but appears sound based on the best available data, said William Mosher of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Guttmacher Institute is a private research group that focuses on reproductive health issues.
Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
