The wide majority of at-home sexually transmitted infection testing kits in the United States appear to be limited to use by adults, a new study finds, and many have limitations that make them less than ideal for young people to use.
While at-home kits do allow more access to STI testing, "we need to create programs that are specific for youth because they have extra needs," said lead author Saumya Sao, a research assistant at the department of gynecology & obstetrics at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, in an interview. "The only platform that did meet our needs was the program that we developed specifically."
The findings were released ahead of the study's scheduled presentation at the 2022 annual clinical and scientific meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (Session A117).
According to Sao, companies began to offer more at-home testing kits during the pandemic as in-person STI clinics shut down. Still, "the fact that we only found 13 self-collect mail-in STI programs shows you that this is pretty new," she said. "There are not too many companies that do it. We found a lot more platforms that allow users to place orders for testing online, but you're still required to go into a lab and actually do the testing."
