Americans more likely to experience adverse effects due to sexual activity

Americans, and especially U.S. women, are three times more likely to suffer premature death and adverse health due to sexual activity than people in other rich nations, scientists said on Thursday. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found some 20 million cases of adverse health conditions and 29,745 deaths in the United States in 1998 were related to sexually transmitted diseases. "The research showed the sexual behavior attributable health burden is about threefold higher in the U.S. than other developed countries," says Shahul Ebrahim, one of the authors of the CDC study. "All of it is totally preventable, and that's the message." Ebrahim said the health burden included conditions such as infertility, abortions, and infections such as gonorrhea. Women accounted for 62% of all adverse health cases, with most female deaths attributable to cervical cancer and HIV. AIDS-related causes were the leading sources of sexual activity-related death among men, according to the researchers. The researchers estimated that about 2 million people in the United States each year have their lives shortened due to illnesses or disabilities related to sexual activity. Deaths from curable sexually transmitted diseases were, however, rare among both men and women. The paper, published in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections, was the first attempt to generate comprehensive findings on the health burden related to sexual behavior in the United States. (Reuters, with additional reporting by Advocate.com)