NurseWeek: Lesbians not free of STDs

Lesbians not free of STDs
Common assumptions about risk not true

By Randy Dotinga
HealthScout Reporter
August 24, 2001


	You've read the article. Now tell us what you think. Regardless of the low risk of STDs among lesbians, safe sex is important. "As I'm fond of saying to the women I see in my office, someone has to be in that percentage of people who get it. How do you know you aren't that person?" Stine says. To learn more about safe sex for lesbians, check this fact sheet from lesbianstd.com, an organization based at the University of Washington. You also can read about safe sex for lesbians in this fact sheet from McGill University in Montreal.

(HealthScout). Lesbians are much more vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) than they might think, a new study suggests.

Researchers surveyed 39 lesbians who had never had sex with men, and five of the women, or 13 percent, reported getting an STD. "That was a lot higher than a lot of people would have anticipated in that group," says study co-author Greta Bauer, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.

As expected, the risk of STDs was even higher among women who had sexual encounters with both genders.

The 39 women were among 286 interviewed by University of Minnesota researchers at the 1997 Twin Cities Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender Pride Festival. The findings appear in the August 2001 issue of the American Journal of Public Health Research.

Previous research has shown that many lesbians have gone through periods of sexual relationships with the opposite sex. The study says that 70 percent of the women surveyed said they'd had sex with both men and women.

But the study focused on the lesbians with no history of sex with men. Bauer says she wanted to resolve the discord between anecdotal stories of lesbians with STDs and the medical community which considers such transmission unlikely.

Some doctors were openly skeptical of lesbians who said they had gotten STDs from women, Bauer says. "The doctors said, 'That's impossible. What man did you sleep with?'"

The lesbians who never had sex with men reported STDs including chlamydia, genital warts, pelvic inflammatory disease and trichomoniasis, also known as trich, which can cause vaginal itching and burning.

Lesbians also can get the human papilloma virus (HPV) and bacterial vaginitis, which some researchers suspect may be transmitted sexually, says Kathleen Stine, a nurse practitioner who studies lesbian STDs at the University of Washington.

Only four of the 39 women surveyed said they regularly got tested for STDs. Most lesbians don't think they need to worry, Stine says.

"For the majority of them, it's probably like STDs for the rest of the population: 'Yeah, OK, there may be a risk, but it's not going to happen to me, and I don't have to be cautious.'"

Doctors are at fault too because they don't push for tests, thinking that for any sexually transmitted disease, "there has to be a man involved somewhere," Stine says.

Bauer says women need to learn more about the risks, and Stine agrees but cautions that education is difficult when basic knowledge is lacking.

"Part of the problem is that we're so bereft of research in our community that we really don't have the information to give to women that would help protect them against [STDs]," Stine says. For example, "We don't really know how chlamydia might be transmitted woman to woman, so it's hard for me to tell a woman that there are safer sex practices she needs to follow."

This is a News story from HealthScout, a service of Rx Remedy, Inc.