RESEARCH ARTICLE
Sexually Transmitted Infections in Adolescents
Kazhila C. Chinsembu*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2009Volume: 3
First Page: 107
Last Page: 117
Publisher Id: TOIDJ-3-107
DOI: 10.2174/1874279301004010107
Article History:
Received Date: 28/4/2009Revision Received Date: 29/6/2009
Acceptance Date: 1/8/2009
Electronic publication date: 24/12/2009
Collection year: 2009
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Adolescents are the age group at greatest risk for nearly all Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs). Adolescents are often at a higher risk for acqsuiring STIs because they are unable to conceptualize actions and their consequences. STIs are more prevalent among adolescent women than men, thus two thirds of newly infected adolescents aged 15-19 years are female. For reasons of biology, gender and cultural norms, adolescent females are also more susceptible than males to STIs. Biologically, adolescent women face increased anatomical and physiological susceptibility to infection due to increased cervical ectopy. The clinical presentation of STIs in adolescents should be carefully examined because some conditions are asymptomatic while other unrelated disease symptoms can easily be mistaken for STIs. This review presents some emergent epidemiological data from developed and developing countries that demonstrate the heavy burden of STIs on adolescents. However, more adolescent-specific STI studies are needed worldwide.
