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By Melissa Schorr
NEW YORK, Mar 28 (Reuters Health) - Teenage girls using Depo-Provera, an injected hormonal birth control method, are less likely to use a condom than girls taking birth control pills, new research suggests.
Depo-Provera and oral contraceptive pills work similarly in the body, but neither provides protection against sexually transmitted diseases, Dr. Pamela J. Murray, director of adolescent medicine at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, told Reuters Health. Murray is director of adolescent medicine at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and lead author of a study published in the February issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health. She presented the report at the Society for Adolescent Medicine meeting this past weekend.
Murray and colleagues surveyed 300 sexually active girls aged 14 to 18 who visited an adolescent clinic or community health center in the Pittsburgh area in the past year.
The girls were asked to divulge what methods of birth control they had used in the past and what methods they were likely to use with a new or regular sex partner in the future. The girls were also asked to frankly assess the odds they would stick to their stated intentions.
During their most recent sexual encounter, 63% of the girls on birth control pills reported they also used a condom, compared with 52% of girls on Depo-Provera.
The researchers also found that 97% of the girls who reported using birth control pills had used condoms in the past, compared with only 89% of the girls who reported using Depo-Provera.
"These are different girls with different experiences making these choices," Dr. Julie S. Downs, a research scientist at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the study's co-authors, told Reuters Health. "We don't want to claim choosing the Pill leads to different condom use. It's more of an indication to physicians that girls on Depo-Provera may have had a different experience."
By finding out the reasons why sexually active girls who take Depo-Provera are less likely to also use a condom, healthcare workers could design more effective interventions to encourage condom use, the researchers said.
For example, the girls who were on Depo-Provera were less likely than girls on oral contraceptives to believe that a condom would prevent a sexually transmitted disease, Downs noted. Girls on Depo-Provera also were less likely to believe their partners would participate in using a condom.
Interventions based on this knowledge could seek to improve girls' condom negotiating skills and address their lack of knowledge about a condom's ability to prevent disease transmission, she explained.
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Slippery Rock University also collaborated on the study, which was funded by the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Magee-Womans Hospital in Pittsburgh.
SOURCE: Journal of Adolescent Health 2001;28:128
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