When Jennifer Nicholas sees television shows or movies where characters "hook up" or have sex with "friends with benefits," she cringes, because that's how she got herpes.

"Getting an STD wasn't even something that crossed my mind," said Nicholas, 39, who learned that she had herpes at age 22. "One day I'm at the doctor's office and it was, 'Surprise! You've got herpes.' "

Experts in sexually transmitted diseases say they've become increasingly concerned about the trend toward having what they call "sexual involvement in nonromantic contexts" -- the technical term for hookups or "friends with benefits" -- because they're especially likely to spread sexually transmitted diseases.

The concern is that that people who have nonromantic relationships tend to have several partners at one time -- "concurrency," in sexual behavior lingo -- in contrast to people engaged in romantic relationships, who tend to be monogamous for the duration of the romance.

"We're concerned that concurrency is speeding up the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases," said Tony Paik, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Iowa who recently published a study on the subject.

"This is a direct route for spreading STDs. There are important implications here for public health," he added.

In Paik's study, published last month in the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, he found that 17 percent of men and 5 percent of women had at some point had more than one sexual partner at a time. Seventeen percent of women and 8 percent of men said they'd been exclusive but their partner had not.

For both genders, having sex with a friend made someone less likely to be monogamous.

Source: CNN

Kevin Eason is a freelance editorial cartoonist and illustrator from New Jersey. His brand of satire covers news events in politics, entertainment, sports and much more. Learn more about the artist at www.kevineasoncartoons.com