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Doctors Push To Have Teens Routinely HIV Tested By Age 16 |
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Written by Instinct Staff |
Tuesday, 01 November 2011
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| Tags: teenagers, adolescents, health, studies, american academy of pediatrics, recommendation, guidelines, hiv, aids, test, regular |
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A pediatrics group has recommended that teenagers in certain areas, regardless of sexuality or sexual activity, begin getting tested for HIV at age 16. Details follow.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a new advisory recommending that teenagers between ages 16 and 18 who live in areas where more than .1% of the population is HIV positive receive routine HIV tests.
"We're finding that when targeted testing is offered to sexually active youth... we're not getting those youth to actually test and we have not decreased the number of new infections in [that] population," says Dr. Jaime Martinez, an author of the AAP paper outlining the new recommendation. "I can't think of a downside [to testing]," says Martinez. "We find that youth who test and become aware of whether they're affected... become more conscious about engaging in safer sex practices."
According to the AAP, teenagers who receive HIV tests routinely are less likely to transmit the disease.
Previously, the AAP recommended that only teens who admitted sexual activity receive HIV tests.
(Source and image source: CNN)
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