What You Need To Know News

Testosterone is the only agent known to improve desire and arousal in women, with results from a new international trial suggesting the benefits in the bedroom are significant.

“Women who used the patch experienced twice the number of satisfactory events than women using a placebo patch,” said the lead investigator Professor Susan Davis, from Monash University in Melbourne.

“That’s an exciting development given no other agent has been found to help women.”

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, involved 814 post-menopausal women worldwide who were given either the male hormone or a dummy patch which is stuck to the stomach and changed twice weekly.

The patch, developed by US drug company Procter and Gamble, is not yet available in Australia.

The women enjoyed half their sexual encounters before the study, but six months on those on the testosterone patch had an extra two satisfying experiences a month, compared with 0.7 among the placebo group.

“We already knew it could work among women taking oestrogen as part of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), but HRT isn’t for everyone so it’s important to know it works alone too,” Prof Davis said.

She said their was a “nervousness” among women in using a male hormone, “but women actually have more testosterone in their blood at any given time than oestrogen”.

The testosterone boost did bring masculinising side-effects however, with a modest increase in unwanted body hair but no change in voice pitch.

Sexual health specialist Professor Basil Donovan, of the University of Sydney, said it was possible side-effects could worsen over time, but overall the results were promising.

“I don’t think they’ll get the same market as (the male anti-impotence drug) Viagra, but it may help many long-term relationships,” Prof Donovan said.

“For a lot of women, the flower of their sexual career is often in their post-menopausal years when they’re no longer busy with work and have met the man they want to be with, and this may be just what they need.”

Younger women who are androgen deficit may also benefit from the patch, he said.

Sex drive can get a natural boost too, with general improvements to health through a better diet, more exercise, less alcohol and fewer life stresses.
Source: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24611195-26103,00.html

Teenage girls feel under increasing pressure from magazines and websites to live up to material and sexual ideals, leaving them vulnerable and unhappy, according to research out today.

Girls as young as 10 are suffering from stress and anxiety because they feel under pressure to grow up too quickly, a study by Girlguiding UK and the Mental Health Foundation has found.

Tracey Murray, trustee for Girlguiding UK, said young girls often found it difficult to cope with an increasing number of social pressures. “Young girls today often feel there is a growing checklist of ideals they have to adhere to. If they don’t they often feel singled out and vulnerable to bullying.”

A significant number of respondents felt that images and advice given in magazines and online pushed them towards adult behaviour before they were ready, she added.

According to the report, A Generation Under Stress?, two in five felt worse about themselves after looking at pictures of models, pop stars and actresses in magazines. Some teens also felt under pressure from such publications to be thin, take drugs and even have plastic surgery. Many were self-conscious about their appearance and weight, with a number citing the pressure of the “size zero” culture. The girls questioned described being put under sexual pressure from boys at school or feeling obliged to wear clothes that made them look older.

Pressures to own material goods such as iPods, mobile phones and expensive clothes are also having a negative impact on the lives of many young girls, according to the report. The perceived need to own expensive gadgets left one in five girls feeling angry or sad. “To an extent teenagers have always felt isolated but new pressures, such as the need to buy expensive gadgets and school exams, are making the situation worse,” said Murray. Exams made 74 % of the girls questions feel worried, and 19% felt negatively about themselves.

The study - compiled from an online survey of 350 girls and eight separate focus groups - found that many young girls believed self-harm was “normal” behaviour for teenagers; 42% of the 10- to 14-year-olds surveyed knew someone who had harmed themselves; 32% had a friend who had suffered from an eating disorder, and half knew someone who had suffered from depression. Some teenage girls linked self-harm with belonging to a particular social group. One participant explained her best friend, a fan of emo music, had cut her wrists “to fit in with the emos”.

Dr Andrew McCulloch, chief executive of the Mental Health Foundation, said: “Girls and young women are being forced to grow up at an unnatural pace in the society that we, as adults, have created and it’s damaging their emotional wellbeing.

“We have a responsibility to put this right - we must tackle head-on the difficulties that the younger generation are facing.”
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jul/14/youngpeople.gender

Almost 200 children are being diagnosed with sexually transmitted diseases every month, raising fears about a generation of promiscuous young people who are failing to heed advice on safe sex.

Ministers pledged in 2004 to spend £50 million on sexual health education, much of it focused on young people. However, the rate of infection has remained steady and was revealed in figures for diagnoses on the under-16s in England.

They were placed in the Commons Library this week after a question from Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, and show that from 2002 to 2006, 11,256 under-16s were diagnosed with gonorrhoea, chlamydia, syphilis, herpes and genital warts.

In 2006, there were 2,282 diagnoses of sexually transmitted infections, a slight rise from 2,148 in 2002.

Chlamydia cases have risen from 1,115 a year to 1,327. Over the past five years, a total of 6,495 children have been diagnosed with the disease, which can cause infertility in later life.
It has no symptoms in either men or women, so often remains undetected.

Genital warts are up from 552 to 621, with 2,845 cases. Cases of gonorrhoea among children have fallen, from 338 to 190, with a total of 1,196 diagnoses.

Last month, The Daily Telegraph reported figures showing that the number of adults diagnosed with sexually transmitted diseases had risen by a quarter in just five years.

The Department of Health admits that rates of most sexually transmitted infections have increased in recent years.

It said the rate of infection could be attributed to factors including increased levels of testing and screening, improved sensitivity of diagnostic tests and changes in sexual behaviour.

In November 2006, the Government launched the “Condom Essential Wear” campaign, which it says is targeted at the hardest to reach young people who are at most risk of contracting an STI.

Approximately £7.3 million was spent on the campaign in 2006/07, on a combination of TV, cinema, radio, press and digital advertising and the creation of two websites.
Source:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1583661/More-children-diagnosed-with-sex-infections.html

There’s an argument out there that oral sex is not sex. For some grown-ups, it’s a way to deny that they’re cheating. To some young people, oral sex preserves virginity—technically speaking—and allows for what is perceived as risk-free sexual intimacy. From a medical perspective, however, this is sex—and generally, as practiced, it’s unsafe. People seem clueless that sexually transmitted diseases such as herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and human papillomavirus can take hold in parts of the oral cavity during sex with infected partners and that the oral contact can infect the genitals, too. HPV is a particularly scurrilous threat, since it incubates silently in the back of the mouth and is now linked to a dangerous form of throat cancer in both men and women similar to the one that arises in the cervix.

Head and neck cancers, which can attack the mouth, nose, sinuses, and throat, have been diseases of people over 50 with a history of heavy smoking and drinking. Thanks to the decrease in smoking and use of chewing tobacco, these disfiguring cancers are in steady decline. However, this triumph of prevention is clouded by an unexpected increase in oropharyngeal cancer, which develops in the tonsils and the base of the tongue and is apt to show up in those who don’t smoke or drink heavily, and in younger people. Earlier this month, researchers from Johns Hopkins reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that between 1973 and 2004 there had been a near doubling of the incidence of these HPV-related oral cancers among people in their 40s.

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that this rise in oropharyngeal cancer is linked to changing sexual practices and, in particular, ones that involve bathing the throat with HPV-infected fluid. Increasingly, scientists are implicating HPV-16, and in some cases 18, the same ones that causes cervical cancer. In 2006, a Swedish study of preserved surgical specimens from excised oropharyngeal cancers going back over 30 years identified HPV-16 in less than a quarter of specimens removed in the 1970s. By the 1990s, the proportion was 57 percent. After 2000, it was 68 percent. In 2007, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found HPV-16 in 72 percent of oropharyngeal cancers in the United States. Not proof, but based on correlations with sexual behavior, and an abundance of similar findings both here and around the world over the past few years, there is credible if not alarming medical concern that the infection is being acquired through unprotected oral sex.

That our children might be at growing risk for this deadly cancer is particularly unnerving. Health surveys indicate that well over half of American teens now engage in oral sex, with about 10 to 20 percent claiming “technical virginity.” Pediatricians will tell you that this behavior is fueled by the adolescents’ belief that oral sex is risk-free play, making it more common and acceptable. But few practice it safely. Some of this is anecdotal. But British researchers determined that more than 80 percent of university students ages 16 to 21 failed to protect themselves with condoms during oral sex. This is an age group well known for diligently using them during vaginal sex.

Granted, the major risk for STDs comes with vaginal sex, but the relative ease and growing frequency of oral sex among those engaging in casual “hookups” is a virtual epidemic in the making. Providing our young people with graphic medical information and stern parental and medical guidance is long overdue. As with all sex education, the abstinence message should be foremost and explicit. But it’s not enough. They must also know that safe sex applies to sex by mouth, too. And, that’s a message for all ages, unless one has a single faithful partner.

Concern about the growing risk of oropharyngeal cancer also bears on the use of the new HPV vaccine, Gardasil, which protects against HPV-16 and 18. Currently it’s approved for young women only. Yet men contract, carry, and transmit HPV and develop HPV-related genital cancers, though far less commonly than do women. But, when it comes to HPV-related tonsil and tongue cancer, men are at greater risk than women. This should provide strong impetus for an HPV vaccine that works for men, too—an effort that’s taking an inexplicably long time. Before anyone thinks, however, that a cancer vaccine will deliver a free pass on risky behavior, just imagine for a moment what a rip roaring case of pharyngeal gonorrhea might look like. It’s not pretty.

Source: http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/bhealy/2008/02/19/clueless-on-stds-throat-cancer-and-oral-sex.html

Wonder what the kids are up to?

Casual, unprotected sex with multiple partners, a Montreal researcher said Tuesday after releasing results of national survey of Canadian youth.

Unsafe sex combined with “an astonishing” lack of knowledge of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) is threatening Canadian teenagers’ health, warned pediatrician Jean-Yves Frappier, head of the adolescent division at Sainte Justine Hospital and the Canadian Association for Adolescent Health.

About two out of three teens surveyed, or 68 per cent, had oral sex, but many don’t know that syphilis and gonorrhea infections can be transmitted via oral sex.

About a third of Canadian teens surveyed online say they are sexually active, the association’s survey showed.

About 25 per cent of sexually active teens between the ages of 14 and 17 did not use condoms the last time they had sex, even though 16 per cent knew their partner was not monogamous.

About two out of three, or 68 per cent, had oral sex, but many don’t know that syphilis and gonorrhea infections can be transmitted via oral sex.

“They don’t know some of the most common sexually transmitted diseases and their consequences,” Frappier said. “(About) 25 per cent think it can be contracted by sitting on the toilet seat or swimming in a pool.”

Half the teens didn’t know that the human papilloma virus can lead to cervical cancer.

Such ignorance, health officials warn, plus unprotected sex with multiple partners, is contributing to a hike in STIs.

“Kids have sex, that’s not new. But there’s been an increase in the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases in the last five years,” Frappier said.

About five per cent of sexually active teens say they have been infected with STIs.

On average, teens report having had three partners since starting sex and 38 per cent of them engage in casual sex.

“It’s not with a partner, it’s with a friend,” said Franziska Baltzer, director of the adolescent clinic at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, who was also involved in the study.

“One young man told me that it’s called ‘recreational’ sex,” Baltzer said.

But in a surprise finding, researchers said that more than half the teens identified their parents as their most significant source of information about sex and sexual behaviour, she said.

“There’s a problem of communication because most parents think their children’s role models are their friends and movie or sports icons,” she said.

But some parents were as unaware of STIs and sexual health as their children. Baltzer said: “There’s an important lack of information.”

Channing Rodman, in charge of developing new sex education programs for Head &Hands, a community-based organization, said teens aren’t engaging in “reckless behaviour.”

Many high school girls go on birth control pills and forgo the condom; then they move on to the next “loving and trusting” partner, then to the next, Rodman said.

“But because there is an atmosphere of trust, they won’t get tested for STIs,” she said. “You have unprotected sex with multiple partners, which is the highest risk sex you can have.

“That concerns us. We have a free, drop-in medical clinic twice a week and we’re seeing a trend of rising STIs.”

Nearly 1,200 teens between 14 and 17-years-old and 1,100 mothers were interviewed online by Ipsos-Reid last fall. The survey results are considered accurate within 2.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Source: http://www.canada.com/