Study shows 1 in 4 teenage girls have an STD

CHICAGO — At least one in four teenage girls in the U.S. has a sexually transmitted disease (STD), amounting to 3.2 million girls, according to a first-of-its-kind study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released March 11. About half of the girls admitted ever having sex, and among them, the rate of STD infection was 40 percent, researchers found. The highest overall prevalence was among black girls, with nearly half of them having an STD compared with 20 percent among white teenagers, CDC researchers said. Among the infected girls, 15 percent had more than one STD.

The results come from data collected from 838 randomly selected girls ages 14 to 19 who participated in a government health survey in 2003 and 2004. The teenagers were tested for HPV, which can cause cervical cancer and affected 18 percent of the girls studied; chlamydia, which affected 4 percent; trichomoniasis, which affected 2.5 percent and herpes, which affected 2 percent.