STDs reported on rise for Arizona's aging population

Health officials have good news and bad news when it comes to Arizona's senior set.

The good news: People are living longer and staying active longer. That includes remaining sexually active well into old age.

The bad news: In an environment that includes more liberal attitudes toward sex, divorce and affairs, more senior citizens are catching sexually transmitted diseases.

"We think of older adults being disinterested or asexual, but that's not true at all. We're sexually active well into our eighth and ninth decades," said Marianne McCarthy, associate professor and researcher with Arizona State University College of Nursing and Health Innovation's Center for Healthy Outcomes in Aging.

"But as people get older, they tend not to practice safe sex as often as you'd think," she added.

According to an annual report from the Arizona Department of Health Services, though people 15 to 29 years old reported more STDs than any other age group in 2013, rates among Arizona residents 55 and older are rising.

The statewide data shows that rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis have all risen from the previous year. But the report notes gonorrhea is spreading faster among people over the age of 40.

In adults over the age of 55, the gonorrhea rate increased to 6.8 cases per 100,000 people in 2013 from 4.9 the previous year, the report said.

And the Maricopa County Department of Public Health, which reported more than half of the STD cases in the statewide evaluation, shows even larger increases in its 2014 data.

According to the county report, gonorrhea rates for Maricopa County's older population jumped from 6.1 to 12.7 between 2012 and 2014.

Denise Millistine, senior associate consultant at the Scottsdale Mayo Clinic Division of Women's Health Internal Medicine, said gonorrhea is particularly easy to spread because the symptoms are hard to identify.

"A lot of people don't have symptoms that they distinguish from how they feel normally," she said.

Millistine said there's no evidence that an aging immune system would make people more susceptible to STDs. But she said physiological changes could possibly ease the spread of bacteria.

"There are changes in the tissue that occur," she said. "Trauma is more likely to cause micro-tears in thinning tissue, which would allow organisms to get in more readily."

The trend in STD rates could also relate to the fact that that people are living longer, healthier lives, said Georgia Hall, a gerontologist, director of Gerontology and Geriatrics at the University of Arizona"s College of Medicine in Phoenix and member of the Arizona Department of Health Services Healthy Aging Advisory Board.

"They say 60 is the new 40," she said. "People are working longer and maintaining sexual activity."

Arizona's population is aging. According to the Department of Health Services, there will be as many people over the age of 65 as those under 15 within the next decade.

Hall also said the spread of STDs among the older population could mean the age group has changed its attitude toward sexual behavior.

She said this might have something to do with people from the free love generation of the 1960s getting older.

"The hippies are going into Medicare," Hall said. "Their societal attitudes — their attitudes toward being faithful to one person — may not be the way it was with their parents or grandparents."

Changing attitudes are occurring nationwide, according to a 2014 global Pew study showing that more than half of the U.S. population thinks premarital sex is either morally permissible or not a moral issue.

Marianne McCarthy, researcher at ASU's College Nursing and Health Innovation, said many assisted-living facilities are taking a more social approach to health care, making it easier for residents to make connections.

Pepper Schwartz, sex and relationship expert for AARP, said it's easier than ever for older people to meet up with the advent of Internet dating.

Schwartz said drugs like Viagra and Cialis are also increasing older males' sex drive, which she said may decrease with age.

"Libido is always, in part, psychological," she said. "The fact is that there is a lot more confidence with these drugs, and it does affect desire in a positive direction."

Meanwhile, Schwartz said, older people have "an especially abysmal record" of condom use.

Jennifer Bass, communications director with the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, said many people 55 and older are singles trying to find new partners after long marriages that ended in the death of a spouse or separation.

And according to a study published in the scholarly journal Demography, there are a lot of older singles these days. Data show U.S. divorce rates among people over the age of 35 have doubled between 1980 and 2010.