Doenças sexualmente transmissíveis em crianças e adolescentes vítimas de abuso sexual atendidas no Centro de Referência do Estado do Pará

Abstract

Sexual abuse of minors has been a problem of great magnitude to public health. Currently in the media, it had been described several years ago but has only been studied in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. According to World Health Organization there were 223 million cases of child sexual victimization in 2002 year. Sexual abuse has serious health consequences, including the acquisition of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). This research evaluated 164 children victims of sexual abuse in the reference center on the north of Brazil, in 2007. For such a protocol form was used with clinical and laboratorial data about sexually transmitted disease during follow-up of those patients. Most children who were diagnosed with STIs were female. The children’s age was mainly from 10 to 18 years and they were from the largest city. The acquisition of an STD was associated mainly to the rape and, in most cases, the abuser was known to the victim. The major STDs were vulvovaginitis (66.2%), followed by condylomatosis (21.5%), gonorrhea (9.2%), herpes (6.2%), pelvic inflammatory disease (4.6%) and syphilis (3.1%). The development of sexual disease contagion is related to the prevalence of adult site. This research is consistent with the literature in several aspects, such as age, sex, perpetrator and abuse. As regards the development of DST it was higher than in developed countries, but lower than in Africa. The infection with gonorrhea was lower than in other South American countries. The syphilis infection, vulvovaginitis, herpes and HPV follow the parameters of developed countries and the rest of the country. Chlamydia was not diagnosed but has great presence on national and international studies. Further studies would be appropriate, particularly with regard to the diagnosis of Chlamydia infection, which is underdiagnosed.