Local health experts agree Ohio University students, not surprisingly, have more sex than Athens County’s year-round residents.
They’re at odds, though, about whether or not students having unprotected sex with multiple partners are inflating reports of sexually transmitted infections in the county — specifically chlamydia.
Since 2009, the number of new chlamydia diagnoses in Athens County has risen each year, according to data from the Ohio Department of Health. Countywide diagnoses in 2012 jumped to 351 from 239 in 2011.
“(Chlamydia) is sexually transmitted, so it’s found in populations where people are engaged in sexual activity,” said Tania Basta, OU associate professor of social and public health. “And obviously, we know that happens in a college town.”
The data also show the county had a rate of 542 new cases of chlamydia per 100,000 residents in 2012 — more than Butler, Portage and Wood counties, the homes of Miami, Kent State and Bowling Green State universities, respectively.
It’s common that college students will have unprotected sex with multiple partners, making condom use the most important deterrent to infection, Basta said, adding that one has to look no further than rising numbers of chlamydia diagnoses to know OU should do more to encourage safe sex and condom use.
The relatively high — and rapidly growing — rate of new chlamydia diagnoses is concerning to Amanda Fox, the nurse supervisor at Campus Care, but she said there’s probably not much OU can do. She said she believes her office already does an effective job of educating students and testing for sexually transmitted infections.
“The best thing anyone can do is to always protect themselves, but we do educate people as they come in,” Fox said. “Our gonorrhea and chlamydia test is a very popular test here.”
Fox said Campus Care employees had tested 984 patients for chlamydia through August of this year, yielding 97 positive results. That’s about one positive result for every 10 tests.
“We probably need to do some better health prevention on campus about using condoms that aren’t just for HIV prevention and pregnancy prevention,” Basta said. “It can be transmitted … orally. (Safe practices include) using some sort of condom for oral sex or using a dental dam if you are a woman doing oral sex.”
Chlamydia can cause fertility problems for women, but is generally asymptomatic, meaning the infection presents no immediate symptoms, said Dr. James Gaskell, health commissioner for the Athens City-County Health Department.
As a result, it spreads quickly in dense populations like college campuses, he said.
“It’s a silent spreader, if you will,” Gaskell said. “I think the problem with chlamydia is it’s asymptomatic.
“It can be like HIV.”
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