Trends in female sexual behaviour and sexually transmitted diseases in London, 1982-1992

Abstract

Objective: To measure changes in female sexual behaviour, including condom use, and their relationship with the incidence of sexually transmitted and other genital diseases in women during the decade 1982-92.

Design: A prospective series of cross-sectional surveys of sexual behaviour reported by a standardised self-administered questionnaire in new patients who presented for screening and diagnosis.

Setting: A genitourinary medicine clinic in West London.

Subjects: 4089 consecutive newly attending patients who completed sexual behaviour questionnaires during 1982, 1987, 1989 and 1992.

Main outcome measures: Trends in socio-demographic status, sexual behaviour, condom-use, sexually transmitted diseases and other genital infections diagnosed by routine clinical and laboratory methods.

Results: Women reported significantly increasing condom use (from 3.6% to 20.7%) and decreasing oral contraception (from 51.2% to 40.1%), but the proportion who used no contraception (23.6% to 24.7%) and the proportion who had never been pregnant (58.3% to 59.9%) remained similar. Numbers of sexual partners in the preceding year decreased (p < 0.001) and an increasing proportion of women practised oral intercourse (p < 0.001). During the same period, there was a progressive decline (p < 0.001) in the incidence of gonorrhoea, chlamydial infection and trichomoniasis by approximately two-thirds. However, the incidence of vaginal candidosis (p < 0.001), bacterial vaginosis (p < 0.001) and genital warts (p < 0.01) increased.

Conclusions: Increasing use of condoms for vaginal intercourse with both regular and non-regular partners has been associated with a decrease in the incidence of gonorrhoea, chlamydial infection and trichomoniasis. There was also an increase in the practice of fellatio and a change in the spectrum of STD and other genital infections with little net reduction in morbidity. HIV infection showed no evidence of heterosexual spread.