DEMOGRAPHIC, SOCIOECONOMIC CHARACHRISTICS AND IMPACTS OF SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES IN ADULT EGYPTIANS: A CLINIC BASED EPIDEMIOLOGICAL STUDY
Essam A. El-Moselhy; Hassan M. Hassan*; and Hsham Amin**
Community Medicine; Dermatology & Venereology* and Clinical Pathology** Faculty of Medicine, Al-Azhar University
Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are important public health problem worldwide. This study was conducted on one hundred adult male and one hundred adult female patients with STDs, attending the Dermato-Venereology and Gynecology Clinics, Al-Hussein University Hospital and an equal number of adult males and females as controls. The aim of the study was to determine the most common STDs, to define socioeconomic characteristics of STD patients, and to determine their impacts on the studied male and female patients. A case-control study design was chosen to perform this research. Vaginal, cervical, and urethral swabs and smears were taken from the cases and controls. Also, scrapes from any suspicious lesions together with blood samples were taken from the patients for lab examinations. The most common STDs among male and female patients were scabies (29.0%) and candidiasis (36.0%), respectively. Further, vaginal discharge (32.0%) and itching (29.0%) were the most common complaints among female and male patients, respectively. Unskilled occupations (76.0%), no enough income (66.0%), and low social class (77.0%) were the most important significant socioeconomic characteristics, P=0.00, 0.00, and 0.04, respectively. Lastly, 19.0%, 18.7%, and 7.7% of the studied females had PID, history of pregnancy wastage, and their infants had complications; P=0.001, 0.001, and 0.03, respectively.
December 2011