"If I get HIV, it's no big deal. They've got drugs for that." When young people go online to arrange live hook-ups with strangers, they might not worry about contracting HIV/AIDS. So says the Syracuse Post-Standard's April 2010 article, "Investigators Try to Figure Out Why More CNY Teens, Young Adults are Getting HIV." But anytime you have sex, you could get a sexually transmitted infection, an STI, including HIV/AIDS. And HIV/AIDS drugs could not work. Or they could make you ache all over and cause uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea that forces you to wear a diaper.
Warning
According the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, young adults ages 13 to 24 are in a high-risk group for contracting HIV/AIDS in the United States. In 2004, African Americans had the highest rate of infection among this age group, accounting for 55 percent of those who had contracted HIV/AIDS. CDC data indicates that, in the 35 U.S. regions that reported HIV/AIDS statistics in 2004, 4,883 people in the13-year-old to 24-year-old age group tested positive for HIV/AIDS. In the reporting regions, this represents about 13 percent of the people diagnosed with the virus that year.
Features
The CDC reports indicated that, compared to older adults with HIV, teens and young adults with the virus were less likely to have AIDS within a year after infection. Within a year after diagnosis with HIV, while 61 percent of all those diagnosed did not have AIDS, 81 percent of 15-year-olds to 24-year-olds and 70 percent of 13-year-olds to 24-year-olds did not have it. Young HIV/AIDS survivors born from 1996 to 2004 lived longer than any other age group with the virus, except for children infected before they turned 13 years old.
Considerations
Young men who have sex with males had an especially high rate of HIV infection, based on reports from the seven cities that provided 1994 to 1998 CDC data. Of these young men, the infection rate was highest among African Americans and Hispanics. In the reporting cities, for ages 15 to 22, 14 percent of African American and 7 percent of Hispanic young men were infected with HIV. During 2001 to 2004, of the 13-year-olds to 24-year-olds infected with the virus, 62 percent were male and 38 percent were female.
Risk Factors
Factors that put teens at risk for contracting HIV are: having sex at an early age; for teen girls, having sex at all; for teen boys, having sex with males; having another STI, such as gonorrhea or Chlamydia; abusing substances; not understanding how HIV is transmitted; living in poverty; and being born from an HIV-infected mother.
Prevention
The CDC recommends an approach to teen HIV/AIDS education that combines one-on-one instruction with school, faith-based and community organization intervention. Research from The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy finds that these kind of programs work. Teens whose parents clearly and often say they expect them to hold off on having sex until they are older and use contraception, including condoms, when they eventually have sex, are less likely to face unplanned pregnancy or contract HIV and other STIs, says the CDC.
