A latest study shows condom usage depends on the couple's nature of relationship rather than individual characteristics.
For the study, Amy Matser from the Public Health Service of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and colleagues interviewed 2,144 participants below 25 years of age. Women comprised a little over half of the sample set.
The participants were told to visit a STI (sexually transmitted infection) clinic in the city from May through to August 2010 where they were asked about sexual behavior with their most recent sexual partners. The team gathered data on 6,401 partnerships.
The researchers calculated that in the group of causal relationships, 33.5 percent out of 4,014 partnerships reported using condoms regularly. Nearly 14 percent of people, who were in steady relationships, used condoms frequently.
The authors also found some couple using condoms inconsistently. That was caused by several contributing factors such as duration of the partnership, ethnicities of the individuals, sex-related drug use and participation in anal sex.
"As physicians we focus more on the individual . . . [but based on the study findings] we probably should address more the type of relationship our patients are going to be involved in," Dr. Luu Ireland from the University of California Los Angeles's (UCLA) department of obstetrics and gynecology. Ireland, who was not a part of the study, told Reuters.
"We found that when partners are more familiar with each other and when they are more alike, inconsistent condom use becomes more prevalent," Matser said. "We should rethink of our current prevention strategies to promote condom use to see whether these methods are sufficiently capable of increasing awareness of the risk of acquiring STIs from partners who are more familiar."
The researchers also found that those who were less educated tended to use condoms less frequently compared to those who had a university degree.
The researchers advised that people involved in experimental sex should use condoms to avoid the spread of STIs.
The study was published in the journal 'Sexually Transmitted Infections.'
