Herpes Cases Soar Amid Safe Sex Alerts, CDC Says

Despite the emphasis on safe sex to prevent AIDS, genital herpes has increased fivefold since the late 1970s among white teenagers and doubled among whites in their 20s.

In all, about one in five Americans over age 12 has the sexually transmitted infection, and most of them don’t know it, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

Dr. Michael St. Louis, who wrote the report with colleagues at the CDC, said it was surprising that herpes went up during the 1980s despite publicity about AIDS.

He said other studies have shown that young people increased their rates of unprotected sex, premarital sex and multiple sex partners. And condoms appear to be less effective in blocking herpes than other diseases because the virus can be transmitted from parts of the body not covered by a condom.

One reason for concern is that herpes sores may make a person more vulnerable to infection with the AIDS virus, the researchers said in the study, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Experts said it is time to get tougher on herpes. They said new steps could include screening for it in patients at clinics for sexually transmitted diseases and in pregnant women, whose newborns could die if infected.

The study used blood samples from about 24,000 people to reveal the prevalence of infection caused by the herpes simplex type 2 virus. The data were gathered between 1988 and 1994 and compared with a similar study done from 1976 to 1980.

The results suggest that 45 million Americans are infected.

Genital herpes causes occasional outbreaks of sores or itching in the genital areas and around the buttocks or thighs. The sores can look like ulcers or paper cuts, and they can be painful. No cure is known.

People can transmit the virus to a sex partner even when they don’t have symptoms.