Young and Gay - A Dangerous Business

by Gus Cairns

A study of teenagers in Australia has revealed that young gay men are 10 times more likely to have a sexually transmitted infection (STI) than their straight peers and four times more likely to inject drugs.

Study author Professor Doreen Rosenthal also said the study had confirmed that they were more likely to commit suicide. In a previous study of homeless youth in Melbourne, she found that many defined themselves as gay, and that no fewer than one in nine of them had attempted suicide in the previous three months.

And in a corrective to the idea that lesbians are less vulnerable to poor sexual health, she said that young girls defining themselves as lesbian or bisexual were four times more likely to have an STI than straight peers and three times more likely to inject drugs.

She commented: "In spite of a generally more positive, less punitive attitude in our society toward openly gay, lesbian and bisexual young people, for some coming out to family and friends is a time fraught with anxiety and distress."

She added that while many young people were engaging in safer sex, only 60 per cent of young men indicated they always used condoms. One-third of 15-year-old boys reported three or more partners over the last year.

Heterosexual teens still equated condoms with contraception and abandoned them when girls were prescribed the pill, she added. In the survey, no fewer than 9 percent of 15-year-old girls reported having become pregnant.

Meanwhile, a separate U.S. study documented that HIV-positive teenagers were likely to have a higher rate of STIs than negative peers.

The study was of infection rates in young women of HPV, the human papilloma virus, which causes genital warts. Many types of HPV, however, also cause cervical cancer in women and anal cancer in men and women who have anal sex.

The study found that 41 percent of HIV-positive teenage girls were infected with multiple cancer-associated variants of HPV, as opposed to 22 percent of their HIV-negative peers -- a finding likely to be replicated in young gay men.

Trials of an HPV vaccine are currently under way among women. The study authors said they should be specifically targeted at HIV-positive teenagers.

Reported in Gay.com U.K.