Teenagers who use a condom the first time they have sex are just as likely to have as many sexual partners as teens who didn't, and less likely to contract gonorrhea and chlamydia, UW researchers say.

A recent UW study, which will be published in the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health, comes on the heels of another research project that found adolescents who received abstinence-focused sexual education were just as likely to have sex as those students who didn't, and that those who took vows of virginity were even more likely to have unprotected sex their first time than those who didn't.

The subjects of the study were 14-19 years old, and 90 percent reported they had received some type of sex-education course in high school. Participants were from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds and from all regions of the United States.

Dr. Taraneh Shafii, acting assistant professor of adolescent medicine, was the principal author of the study, while King Holmes and Judy Wasserheit, Department of Global Health professors, along with Kate Stovel, associate professor of sociology, contributed as co-authors.

Shafii said she conducted the study because she was interested in what difference using a condom would have, specifically the first time the individual had sex.

"I was really interested in what happened at sexual debut ... how in Africa there's a significant portion of women who are infected with HIV the first time they have sex," Shafii said.

The data was analyzed at the Center for AIDS and STD Studies at the UW, where Shafii was serving a fellowship. Shafii used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) database to draw her conclusions about the use of condoms and the transmission of STDs.

Add Health data is well-credited and the best resource for adolescent health data available, Shafii said.

"[Add Health] is the largest, most comprehensive survey of adolescents ever undertaken," Shafii said.

Add Health, based at the University of North Carolina, has contributed data to more than 1,000 studies regarding adolescent health since its creation in the mid-1990s.

"This is really the first study that has had national scope," Stovel said.

She added that the study was important because it served as a rebuttal to the Bush administration's abstinence-only policies.

"Our study, I think, is a challenge to the view that you shouldn't tell kids anything about sex," Stovel said. "I think science is becoming clear on this. These are empirical questions, and we can answer them with empirical studies."

Shafii feels the results of the study are fairly straightforward.

"Yes, we did find that [adolescents] were more likely to use a condom," Shafii said. "[With] the current study, we simply found that [condom use] was persistent. There's an average of six to eight years between the first sex and the last [of subjects in the study], and we again found that those who used a condom at debut were likely to have used one at last sex as well."

Reach reporter Jake Sommer at news@thedaily.washington.edu.