Two UK surveys, 10 years apart, indicate that there’s been a substantial increase in the rate of condom use, particularly among young people. However, condom use is inconsistent among people who report high rates of new sexual partners.

This may be a factor in the recent resurgence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), Dr. Jackie Cassell from the University of Brighton and colleagues at University College London surmise.

They explored trends in condom use over time using data from 13,765 residents of Britain aged 16 to 44 surveyed in 1990 and 11,161 similarly aged individuals surveyed in 2000.

Condom use among sexually active 16- to 24-year-old men increased significantly from 61 percent in 1990 to about 82 percent in 2000. For women of the same age, condom use increased from 42 percent to a little more than 63 percent, the researchers report in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections.

In general, smaller increases were seen among older age groups in the survey.

The data also suggest that younger people are more likely to report using condoms partly or primarily for the prevention of sexually transmitted infections and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

“Young people use condoms more than they did in 1990, yet rates of STIs have risen since the 1990s,” Cassell commented to Reuters Health.

“Our study suggests that a major reason for this is likely to be that about two-thirds of individuals who have multiple sexual partners - defined here as 2 or more partners in the past 4 weeks - use condoms only some of the time. Unless these individuals use condoms consistently and correctly, every time, they are likely to catch and to transmit STIs,” she warned.

Individuals who often have new partners, or have multiple partners, are an important group for health education, who should be encouraged to use condoms “always,” Cassell concluded.

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SOURCE: Sexually Transmitted Infections, December 2006473.