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Study Shows Condom Use Decreases Pelvic Inflammatory Disease Recurrence

Disease Linked To Chronic Pelvic Pain, Tubal Pregnancies And Infertility

An article in the August 2004 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, showed consistent condom used decreases women's risk for pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), according to a multi-center study from the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH). The report is the first prospective study to clearly show an association between regular condom use and a reduced risk not only for recurrent PID, but also for related complications such as chronic pelvic pain and infertility, according to Roberta Ness, M.D., M.P.H., professor and chair of the department of epidemiology at GSPH and the study's first author.

Women who reported regular use of condoms were 60 percent less likely to become infertile and half as likely to have an episode of recurrent PID as those women whose partners never used condoms, the study found.

While the association between condom use and a decreased risk of acquiring the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other viral STDs is well known, fewer data exists on the relationships among condom use, bacterial STDs and PID.

In the United States, more than a million women will have an episode of acute PID each year, with the rate highest among teenagers, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). More than 100,000 women become infertile each year as a result of PID, and a large proportion of the 70,000 tubal pregnancies that happen yearly are related to the consequences of PID. In 1997 alone, some $7 billion was spent on PID and its complications.

Additional authors are Richard Sweet, M.D., University of Pittsburgh and Magee-Womens Hospital of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; Debra Bass, M.S., and Kevin Kip, Ph.D., both of the University of Pittsburgh; Hugh Randall, M.D., Emory University, Atlanta; Holley Richter, Ph.D., M.D., University of Alabama School of Medicine, Birmingham; Jeffrey Peipert, M.D., M.P.H., and Andrea Montagno, R.N., both of Women and Infants Hospital, Providence, R.I.; David Soper, M.D., Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston; Deborah Nelson, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Diane Schubeck, M.D., MetroHealth Medical Center, Cleveland; and Susan Hendrix, D.O., Wayne State University, Detroit.