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Study: Condom use rises in the US

Posted at 8:27 AM, Aug 11, 2017
and last updated 2017-08-11 11:28:23-04

One-third of people in the United States say they use condoms during sex, according to a report distributed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC reported 20 million new cases of sexually-transmitted diseases are diagnosed each year in the United States. Diseases include HPV, HIV, gonorrhea, chlamydia, hepatitis and others. 

The report studied more than 20,000 men and women ages 15 to 44 from 2011 to 2015. From the study, 33.7 percent of male participants said they used a condom the last time they had sex. The percentage was 29.5 percent in a 2002 study. 

For women, only 23.8 percent said the man they had sex with used a condom the last time they had sex. In 2002, the number was 23.4 percent. 

However, the condom used did not always work. Nearly 7 percent of women studied who had had sex within the previous four weeks said that the condom either broke or fell off completely during sex or withdrawal. 

Nearly 60 percent of women and more than 47 percent of men studied said they did not use a condom at all during sex in the last 12 months. 

"The use of condoms is a public health issue," report author Casey Copen, a statistician at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics said according to WebMD.com. "STDs can lead to long-term consequences, such as infertility," she said. "Condoms, when used consistently and correctly, reduce the risk of HIV and STDs."