Vaginal douching ups STI risk

Your smelly vaginal discharge has you ready to try just about anything to spare yourself the humiliation next time you get up close and personal he decides to go down there.

Douching is when women use a cleansing liquid to flush out the vagina. This can cause irritation and alter the pH level of the vagina. And results of a study provide "convincing evidence" researchers say, that douching increases the risk of sexually transmitted infections.

Among a group of sexually active adolescent girls, those who said they always practised vaginal douching were nearly two times more likely to have a sexually transmitted infection (STI) than girls who said they never douched, the researchers found.

"Douching is a harmful activity because it disrupts the healthy vaginal micro-organisms and enables STIs to take hold," Dr Sten H. Vermund of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Tennessee, US, told Reuters Health.

"Overwhelming evidence from biomedical research suggests that douching is harmful for women's health," Vermund added.

Douching shortens time to infection

Vermund and his colleagues studied the douching habits over three years of 368 sexually active girls who were nearly 17 years old on average.

During follow-up assessments, 88 of the girls never reported douching. Compared to this group, as well as to girls who intermittently reported douching, the 50 girls who reported always douching had a shorter time to acquiring an STI.

When the investigators allowed for other factors associated with STIs, including race and age, as well as HIV status and baseline sexual history, the risk for STIs was nearly two-fold greater for girls who always douched compared to those who never douched.

In the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, the investigators note that this study is the first to follow girls over time, and to ensure that douching practises preceded incident STIs. Previous studies that suggested douching as a risk factor for STIs could not determine if douching was practiced in response to the STI symptoms.

Vermund concludes, based on this study and others, that "adolescents and women should be discouraged from douching unless guided to do so by a doctor." - (Joene Hendry/Reuters Health)

SOURCE: American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Updated by Health24 - April 2014.

Read more:
Coca-Cola no contraceptive
Spermicide Coke wins Ig Nobel