Older sexual predators, sometimes known as "cat daddies," who lure young sexual partners are not behind the high rate of chlamydia among teens, according to a new national study based in New Orleans. The report, published in the March issue of Sexually Transmitted Diseases (2002;29;3) says that only about one-third of the infected women had sexual partners who were at least three years older.

"I was surprised," said Patricia Kissinger, the principal author and an associate professor of epidemiology at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. "People want to believe it's an abnormal thing and young girls are victims, but they're doing the normal thing in having sex with boys their age."

The study is the latest in a series of reports about teenagers and STDs. Kissinger and colleagues studied 225 women who were treated at public clinics in New Orleans, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Seattle and Birmingham, Ala. from June 1995 to May 1997. They focused on chlamydia because it is most prevalent among younger people. Young women are especially vulnerable because of the vaginal walls' immature immune system, Kissinger said. The CDC estimates there are about 3 million cases of chlamydia in the United States each year.

While the report might absolve older men of some blame for the epidemic, it does not relieve parents and health care workers of the responsibility to counsel young people about sex, said Barbara Major, executive director of St. Thomas Health Services. The "cat daddy" phenomenon "speaks to our inability to do adequate education with young people about issues of sex and sexuality," she said. "Our young people are dying from our unwillingness to do things about sex in their world."

Counselors in school-based health clinics are limited in what they can do because state law bans the distribution of condoms there.

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