Comments on: Increased rates of sexually transmitted diseases amongst the older

By: McGraw

McGraw — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:42:58 +0000

I think there’s evidence to suggest that “hooking up” peaked around the 1960-1985 era……..

By: agnostic

agnostic — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:41:35 +0000

Hmm, no idea — I don’t actually know that much about the history of these diseases. I just found that graph when I was looking for just US gonorrhea rates, as part of that post showing that young people now are less promiscuous.

By: bayesian

bayesian — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:36:42 +0000

You are the _man_, agnostic.

Fascinating -

OK, since you have established beyond a reasonable doubt that you know far more than you have any reason to about STI incidence, and with reference to Figure 2, WTF with Belgium? Buncha infected soldiers and other colonial hangers-on coming back from the Congo and spreading their new strains around the country?

Particularly in 1954 - did the whole country decide to spend a Lenten year or what? (I strongly suspect 1954 is some sort of recordkeeping glitch, since 1953 is a strong positive bump).

By: agnostic

agnostic — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:35:26 +0000

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?artid=1047730&pageindex=2#page

By: bayesian

bayesian — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:39:24 +0000

Agnostic -

Oops, sorry, I thought you were referring to the NYT link Jason posted. I think I can be forgiven for that since you referenced your previous GNXP post about the explosion of gonorrhea in the US. If you are assuming a common demographic history vis a vis STI rates between the US and the UK you perhaps ought to make that a bit more explicit.

But yes, if there was also a great increase in the UK gonorrhea rates at the same time as in the US, then the cohort in the science daily snippet would indeed probably be the culprits, pending data about the age distribution of gonorrhea cases in the UK in the mid late 1950s.

By: agnostic

agnostic — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:32:25 +0000

Ah, you thought I was talking about the link Jason posted — I was referring to the original post.

By: agnostic

agnostic — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:31:11 +0000

@agnostic, since oldest of them were just out of diapers in say 1955, yes, I agree it's quite a precocious achievement indeed.

From the article:

Men and those between the ages of 55 and 59 were significantly more likely to have an STI than anyone else.

Among women, rates were highest among those aged 45 to 54; among men, rates were highest among those aged 55 to 60 plus.

The study was done between 1996 and 2003, and the co-hort that started the gonorrhea epidemic of the late 1950s was likely born between 1938 and 1943. So they would show up in the study as the age group most strongly hit by the recent increase, or very close to it anyways.

By: bayesian

bayesian — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:32:35 +0000

@agnostic, since oldest of them were just out of diapers in say 1955, yes, I agree it’s quite a precocious achievement indeed.

(for those who didn’t read the NYT link, the age group is stated as 35-54, so born roughly 1951-1970, i.e., quite possibly more Xers than Boomers depending on a:finer age distribution stats from CDC; and b: your favored cutoff date for Boomerhood)

Thanks for the NYT link, Jason. The author appears to be an interesting semi-crank (not that I disagree with the overall observation you guys have been that we appear to be in the midst of yet another round of “kids these days” hysteria; as the 50 year old father of 16 and 14 year old girls in SoCal suburban schools I hear about it a fair amount).

Thanks also Razib for the original. Hard to infer much of anything from the almost dataless snippet (I’m not about to join the BMA to try to find the real data) – for one thing, I don’t know that the demographic substructure of STIs in the West Midlands is at all comparable to that in the US (maybe it is – I really don’t know).

By: agnostic

agnostic — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:35:04 +0000

That age group is probably the same cohort that initiated the huge increase of gonorrhea in the mid-late-1950s, when they were in the young adult age range.

At least they can’t be accused of underachieving.

By: Jason Malloy

Jason Malloy — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 04:28:27 +0000

"More than half of all new H.I.V./AIDS diagnoses in 2005 were given to middle-aged Americans, up from less than one-third a decade ago, according to the Centers for Disease Control."