Herpes infections decline: study
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The proportion of Americans with the herpes virus has declined, due perhaps to a curb in promiscuity among young people following earlier jumps in rates of infection, researchers said on Tuesday.
While U.S. infection rates have declined 19 percent among 14- to 49-year-olds since the early 1990s, genital herpes is still being spread. Herpes infections increase susceptibility to the deadly virus that causes AIDS.
The decline of herpes infections among adolescents and young adults “provides biological evidence supporting findings from behavioral surveys that sexual risk behaviors decreased in adolescents,” said the study published in this week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
There may also be “unmeasured factors, such as careful partner selection, condom use, and/or choosing oral sex over vaginal sex,” wrote study author Fujie Xu of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
He said the surveys did not contain enough questions about sexual habits to determine definitively why the trend had reversed.
Infections with the herpes-1 virus, the type associated with mouth sores, also declined, although researchers saw an increase in genital cases caused by that virus. An increase in oral sex may account for the rise in genital cases, they said.
Herpes-2 infections, which cause most cases of genital herpes, rose 30 percent between a late 1970s survey and one done between 1988 and 1994 when 21 percent of participants reported infections. In the latest survey of more than 11,500 people between 1999 and 2004, infections declined to 17 percent of respondents.
The drop in herpes-2 infections was most pronounced among those younger than 40. The virus was reported in 11 percent of men and 23 percent of women. Among blacks, 42 percent tested positive, a decline of 4 percent since the earlier survey.
Recurrent outbreaks of the irritating and often painful sores associated with herpes viruses can be controlled with drugs, but the virus is incurable and can be spread even when the sores are not present.
The virus occasionally can lead to blindness, encephalitis and infections in newborns.
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