70% of these women experienced first intercourse before the age of 18 years.
In Germany, only a small proportion of women experienced first intercourse before the age of 14 years.
17.2% (95% CI, 14.7-20.0%) of sexually active women reported that they experienced first intercourse before or at age of 14 years (Table 2).
Proportion of girls in the study cohorts who experience first sexual intercourse before age 15.
Recent studies on adolescents report that women experience first sexual intercourse at a younger age than men. 1 2 3 Finally, whereas 70 year old men in the 1970s more often reported positive attitudes to sexuality than women, there were no sex differences in attitudes in 2000-1.
In this study, more than 70% of women experienced their first intercourse before age of 17, but less than 5% before age of 14. Factors strongly associated with younger age at first intercourse were a high number (≥ 7) of sexual partners during lifetime, current smoking and a past pregnancy.
Most women included in the present analysis had not experienced sexual intercourse before study entry (n = 793, 80.8%), 169 women (17.2%) had experienced first sexual intercourse within 6 months prior to study entry, and data on sexual history were missing for 20 women (2.0%).
A total of 982 women who experienced first sexual intercourse during the study and had no HPV infection detected before the recorded date of their first experience of sexual intercourse, and women who experienced first sexual intercourse less than 6 months before inclusion, were included in the analysis.
Although hampered by its low response rate, our study indicate that in Germany the majority of young women experienced first sexual intercourse before the age of 18 years, but only a small proportion before the age of 14 years.
Eight (4.7%) and nine (5.3%) of the women who experienced first sexual intercourse prior to study entry were seropositive for HPV-16 or HPV-18, respectively, at study entry.
In the Danish study of women experiencing first sexual intercourse mentioned previously, having ≥3 sexual partners increased the risk of infection 9-fold; age, smoking habits, oral contraceptive use, and age at first sexual intercourse were not significantly associated with infection [ 15].
