Virgin at 29: Any Associated Risk?

I need your help to clarify an issue, which has been giving me sleeplessness night.

I am a virgin of 29 years and single. Please let me know if being a virgin at 29 years is risky.

If yes, what are the risks? Please, let me know for I got this information through a friend that it is very risky for a woman to remain a virgin for this long, and since then I have been very worried.

Thanking you for your anticipated understanding and early response.

Juliet Dear Juliet, I commend your courage for bringing up this very personal issue for the attention of this column. However, my approach to your questions will flow from a strict scientific outlook and understanding of the issues at hand.

On a general overview, my answer will be both a direct “No” and an indirect “Yes”.

For one, medically speaking, there is no special risk attached to being a virgin at age 29yrs just as it does not necessarily put you at a better position per future reproductive activity.

On a positive note, however, is the fact that it puts you in a position of purity as per the impossibility of contacting the many sexually transmittable infections.

Notable among these are the major ones like HIV/AIDS, Syphilis, Hepatitis B, Chlamydia and Gonococcus infections.

Other sexually transmittable infections that you are protected from while you maintain the “virgin status” include herpes simplex virus (type 2), genital warts, Lymphogranuloma venerum.

Aside from these, it can be inferred that you are better protected from the possibility of developing cancer of the cervix (the cervix is the entrance canal into the womb or uterus). This is so because research findings point to the fact that very early first sexual intercourse (especially before the age of sixteen in ladies) and subsequent recurrent sexual intercourse put such ladies at a higher risk for the development of cervical cancer later in life.

Also interesting to note is the relevant information that HIV/AIDS is a major risk factor for the development of cancer of the cervix in women of younger age group. Thus, since sexual intercourse is a major avenue that HIV is contacted from, abstaining from sexual intercourse via “virginity maintenance” is also a double protection from HIV/AIDS and by inference early on-set cancer of the cervix.

Social wise, especially in cultures close by, it is worthy of note that it is the desire of some men to meet their wife “intact” on their first night together after their wed-lock.

Although, the gender ‘disadvantage’ here is rather on the side of the woman, where the persistence of the hymen (the virgin’s membranecovering of the vagina) is a sure sign of virginity maintenance; whereas, no such equivalent sign exist in the male. On the other hand, however, there are some established findings that generally point to the fact that late first pregnancy in women put them at higher risk for some pathologic conditions, regardless of the fact that the woman has maintained her virgin status or not.

Prominent among such pathologic conditions is the higher likelihood of developing Fibroids in the uterus of women who had their first pregnancy late in their reproductive life.

In other words, the old medical adage which says that “a womb that was unable to carry babies will eventually carry fibroids” is a clearer explanation of this development.

Similarly, retrospective surgical research findings on the risk factors for breast cancer also point to the fact that early and recurrent pregnancies in women are protective against the development of breast cancer in future.

In this wise, getting ‘disvirgined’ much later in the reproductive life of a woman may not be protective against the development of breast cancer in future. In the same vein, older pregnant women (particularly, those above 35yrs) are more at risk of having babies with congenital abnormalities than women who get pregnant at younger age; this is also the case for other complications in pregnancy.

From the aforementioned, my concluding impression from medico-social point of view is that just as it is desirable to maintain the virgin status till late based on the earlier mentioned incidental advantages, it is not a win-win situation, especially with respect to delaying early pregnancy.