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According to a Student British Medical Journal report, sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s) among older adults have more than doubled in the past 10 years, as the age group is having more sex than ever.

Of those between 50 and 90 years of age, 80% are sexually active, according to the report, spreading opportunity for disease with the aid of possibly overlooked symptoms.

“A 56 year old man has trouble with his <<waterworks>>. A 61 year old woman reports lower abdominal pain. The chances are that sexually transmitted infections are not high on your list of differential diagnoses – but increasing evidence indicates that they should be,” state the co-authors.

Sexually transmitted diseases among older adults have more than doubled in the past 10 years, as the age group is having more sex than ever

Sexually transmitted diseases among older adults have more than doubled in the past 10 years, as the age group is having more sex than ever

In the editorial discussion by Rachel von Simson, a medical student at King’s College London, and Ranjababu Kulasegaram, a consultant genitourinary physician at St Thomas’ Hospital London, cases like HIV among the group now composes 20% of the UK’s reported HIV population.

That’s up from 11% in 2001.

With the increase in reports of HIV among older populations, the authors write on increased cases of other diseases like syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhoea in the UK, United States and Canada’s older demographic.

The authors write that the cause is in part because of prolonged health and survival.

This news brings several words of caution in the report, as well as by experts, suggesting seniors may want to consider STD testing.

“You never have to retire from sex,” clinical psychologist Judy Kuriansky told CNN, “but you should always behave as the 20-30 year-olds do. You need to be cautious about it.”

“Just as we spend a lot of time advising kids to practice safer sex, we need to do the same things for ourselves and our parents,” sex therapist Ian Kerner told CNN.

Ian Kerner points out that those on their 50’s and up compose the fastest-growing demographics for those who use online dating.

But with some older women into or past menopause believing a condom as unnecessary or men finding them contributors of erectile dysfunction, according to the CNN report, safe sex has dwindled while the more unfavorable, ailing figures rise.

Russian scientists say that sniffing a potential partner’s scent could tell if Mr. Right has a sexually transmitted disease (STD).

Russian researchers found that gonorrhea-infected men smelt “putrid” to women, reports MSNBC.com.

“Our research revealed that infection disease reduces odor attractiveness in humans,” wrote Mikhail Moshkin, a professor at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Russia, and the lead author of research published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

The off-putting scent may be subtle, more a chemical warning than a stench of body odor, but it does have some effect, according to the experiment conducted by Mikhail Moshkin and his colleagues.

The scientists had already observed that certain animals, such as mice and rats, were not as attracted to the scents of those that were infected with disease, reports MSNBC.com.

They investigated if humans would also be turned off by the scent of an infected person, particularly one with an STD.

The researchers took samples of armpit sweat and spit from 34 Russian men aged between 17 and 25.

The group included 13 young men with gonorrhea, 16 who were healthy and five who had had the disease but were successfully treated.

Then 18 female students aged 17 to 20 were asked to sniff the samples.

They obtained sweat samples by dressing the men in tight-fitting T-shirts with cotton pads sewn into the armpits.

After an hour of sweating, men bagged their shirts and the pads were placed in glass vials for the women to sniff.

The women ranked the infected men less than half as high as healthy or recovered guys on a “pleasantness score” that assessed scent.

And when they were asked to describe the scent, the women said that nearly 50% of the infected men’s sweat smelt “putrid”.

The researchers said the study indicates that humans, like other animals, might use scent to sniff out appropriate mates.

“We can conclude that unpleasant body odor of infected persons can reduce the probability of a dangerous partnership,” the scientists say in the MSNBC.com report.