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Probability of catching an STD

 
 
Reply Sun 29 May, 2011 08:52 am
Hi everyone.

I'm trying to figure out the likelihood of someone catching an STD based on data posted on the CDC website. The data is broken down by disease, state, gender, ethnicity, age group, # of cases, total population, and incidence rate.

As an example, suppose the total female population of 20-24 year olds from a certain ethnic group is 12,188, and of those, there are 43 reported to have an STD. The incidence rate is 325.81 (the CDC uses 100,000 as a factor in calculating this). If a male were to sleep with a female from that group, what's the likelihood of him catching something? Does the incidence rate for the overall male population matter in this case, for say, calculating the relative risk factor?

For those interested in the data, you can find a generator here: http://wonder.cdc.gov/std-std-v2008-race-age.html . Choose "Disease", "State", "Gender", "Race/Ethnicity", "Age" and press "Send" to replicate the conditions I listed above.

Thanks in advance.
 
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JPB
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Reply Sun 29 May, 2011 11:38 am
@hostsamurai,
hmmm.... I answered this earlier and it disappeared. let's try again.

The data you're looking at is prevalence data not incidence data. Prevalence is the rate of extant infection in a given population whereas incidence is the rate of new cases of an infection in a given time period (usually per year).

I don't see how you can use the prevalence rate to determine the likelihood of someone catching an STD from a single exposure to the virus. Different viruses have differing transmission rates and vectors. Some are easily transmitted through sexual contact (gonorrhea or syphilis, for example) and others require a body fluid to blood transfer (i.e., hiv).

So, given that what you have is the prevalence rate, you would need to look at the transmission rate of an individual STD to determine the incident rate and relative risk.
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