THURSDAY, March 11 (HealthDay News) -- For the millions looking for love on the Internet, the nagging question remains: Is my virtual paramour the person they say they are?

A new survey of more than 5,000 U.S. online daters finds that the answer to that question is -- by and large -- 'yes,' or at least as honest as they would be in face-to-face dating.

The study also found that when fibs do occur, men and women appear equally guilty.

"The concerns people have when dating online are very similar to the ones they have in their face-to-face lives. And we found that dating behavior is very similar as well," said study author Jeffrey Hall, an assistant professor in the department of communication studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

The study appears in the March 8 issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

The new study comes on the heels of recent work by German and U.S. researchers indicating that users of friendship-oriented social networking sites, such as Facebook, offer up realistic self portraits when posting online profiles.

But is this true for the online dating world, where the emotional stakes are higher?

To find out, Hall and his team administered an online survey in 2007 to more than 5,000 American adults -- all patrons of a "large [unnamed] online dating site".

Participants averaged 40 years of age, more than 80 percent were white, and nearly three-quarters were women. More than half said they were single and had never been married, while just over 40 percent said they were divorced. A little over two-thirds said they were not currently involved in a romantic relationship.

After collecting demographic information, the participants were asked how likely they would be to misrepresent themselves online with respect to their personal attributes, relationship goals, personal interests, personal assets, and/or past relationships.

The researchers also ranked participants in terms of how neurotic, extroverted, conscientious, agreeable, and/or open they were.

The online daters also completed a questionnaire to assess to what degree they were capable of putting on a "social performance" and/or altering their behavior during face-to-face meetings, simply to suit particular people and changing circumstances.

As a whole, those who indulged in such behaviors -- generally driven by an interest in being liked, fitting in, and/or looking good -- were characterized as "self-monitors" -- people who are predisposed to stage-manage the impressions they make on others.

According to the study, patrons of the online dating site were no more or less likely to lie about themselves than people who find dates the old-fashioned way via work, recreation or friends.

It was an individual's personality that seemed to determine whether they would lie or bend the truth in the virtual world.

For example, being "adventurous" and "open" to new experiences lowered the likelihood of lying online, presumably because such individuals felt they were interesting enough to begin with.

On the other hand, while extroverts were less likely than introverts to misrepresent their personal interests, they were more likely to lie about their prior relationship history online. The authors speculated that this could be a function of extroverts having had a more "active" past then their introverted colleagues -- a fact they might prefer not to highlight.

People who tended to shift their behavior to create more favorable impressions in "real-world" meetings -- so-called "high self-monitors"-- were most likely to try to deceive others online, the team found.

"So when these kind of people are online and looking to date they're going to make their pictures better and their profile more exciting," noted Hall. "By comparison, low self-monitors are going to present themselves exactly as they are in all circumstance -- in person and online."

Being a neurotic personality seemed to have no bearing one way or the other on honesty in online dating, the team found.

Demographics also played a role in online deception. Not surprisingly, older online daters were more likely to lie about their age than younger daters, and men were more likely to shave years off their age than women.

Overall, however, "we found that the differences between men and women online were very small," Hall stressed.

"Yes, we did find that women were more likely to misrepresent their weight," he added. "And men were more likely to misrepresent their personal interests, and more likely to misrepresent personal assets like job and money and personal attributes, like how nice and polite they are. But these latter differences were really very small."

Hall stressed, however, that levels of online deception might change depending on the context.

"The survey was about people more interested in establishing a single romantic relationship," he noted. "But there are sites that are exclusively dedicated to the hook-up -- the short-term, casual sex experience. And in that case, you don't really need to present yourself in a fully authentic way, because the purpose is just to enjoy yourself in a one-night stand. And a survey of that kind of online group might find very different results."

Eli Finkel, an associate professor of social psychology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., said the study results came as little surprise.

"These findings lend empirical validation to my longstanding assumption that the typical person using modern dating approaches doesn't differ much from the typical person using traditional dating approaches," he said.

"There was probably a time when people using dating services were different in important ways from the general dating population," added Finkel, "but that seems to be less and less true as modern dating approaches become increasingly popular. Online daters, speed-daters, and the like seem to be just like the rest of us in most ways. That this intuition extends to truth-telling among online daters is important validation of that general point."

More information

There's more on social networking at the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication  .

TUESDAY, March 9 (HealthDay News) -- Better health translates into better sex lives, with healthy people more likely to engage in sex (and good sex at that) and to express an interest in sex, new research finds.

This association held firm into middle-age and later life as well, according to the study by University of Chicago researchers.

The authors of the study, published in the March 10 issue of BMJ, also created a novel measure called "sexually active life expectancy." According to this new measure, men aged 55 could expect another 15 years of sex while women of the same age could expect 10.6 more active years.

Overall, however, more men reported a satisfying sex life than women, a chasm that widened as people aged.

The findings shine light on a little discussed topic.

"The really important thing about this study is just that it was done," said Dr. Eva Ritvo, vice chair of psychiatry at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. "People don't look at sexual activity in a scientific way very often but it's so very fundamental to our existence. The focus has always been on illness, but health is about well-being, looking at sexual functioning as an important part of well-being."

Dr. Margaret E. Wierman, professor of medicine at the University of Colorado Denver, said the new study "points out that, over time, as a society women and men are becoming more comfortable talking about sex. Having a good sex life is critical to their overall quality of life."

But the fact that men are doing better than women is something that needs attention, Ritvo stated. "Why should men be having better sex than women? Viagra came out for men. Where's the female equivalent? For whatever reason women are not as satisfied as men and that needs to be addressed," she said.

The study authors looked at two different samples of people, one involving over 3,000 adults aged 25 to 74, and another with more than 3,000 adults aged 57 to 85. An equal number of men and women were in each group.

Men were more likely to report positive experiences with sex than women. This gender gap was most noticeable among 75-to-85-year olds, with 38.9 percent of men, compared to 16.8 percent of women, reporting being sexually active. Almost 71 percent of men in this age group reported a good sex life, versus only half of the women.

And more men today are reporting an interest in sex than in 2000.

"This probably is related to new medications in therapy, so now men who before never could even think about having sex can have sex," Weirman said.

Also, she added, "as people age, the unhealthy men die off so these are the healthiest men in that cohort."

Study lead author Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau, director of the University of Chicago's Program in Integrative Sexual Medicine, said the "major reason why the picture looks better for men than women is that women tend to outlive their marriages and relationships, so there are more women in the adult population without partners. But if you look at women who have partners, the proportion who say they're sexually active is about the same as men who have a partner."

On the other hand, men's sex lives do seem to suffer more from poorer health.

"At age 55, men have, on average, 15 years of sexually active life expectancy and women about 11 years," Lindau explained. "Men who are in excellent or good health gain an additional five to seven years. What this says is that men benefit more from good health. Men in poor health lose more years of sexually active life expectancy than do women."

People with partners were more likely to be having sex and more men than women reported having partners, especially in later life, the study found.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more on sexuality during later life.

WEDNESDAY, March 10 (HealthDay News) -- Most women who have had a Cesarean delivery can safely have a vaginal delivery later, an expert panel concluded Wednesday.

Surging C-section rates in the United States have worried experts, but the panel said that just because a woman has had a C-section in the past, there's no reason she must have one in subsequent deliveries.

However, current medical practice and fear of lawsuits are major obstacles to encouraging women to have a vaginal delivery after a C-section, the National Institutes of Health-sponsored panel said.

"This meeting was stimulated by the rising Cesarean rate all over this country, as well as the world," Dr. F. Gary Cunningham, Panel and Conference Chairman and Beatrice and Miguel Elias Distinguished Chair in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, said during an press conference Tuesday afternoon.

Women who have one C-section are likely to have more C-sections down the line, Cunningham said.

"This has created some problems," he said." Another problem has been the voices of many women who have bemoaned the fact that they have not had access to care where a trial of labor can be offered as an delivery."

In the United States, the rate of vaginal delivery after a prior Cesarean has dropped from 30 percent to about 10 percent over the past 15 years, Cunningham noted.

To come up with their recommendations, the panel looked at all the available data as well as hearing testimony from doctors, hospital administrators and academics.

Cunningham was careful to note that the panel's findings are not guidelines to be followed, but rather a call to consider alternatives to current practice.

"What we found was the use of a vaginal delivery after Cesarean is certainly a safe alternative for the majority of women who have one prior Cesarean," he said.

There are several major reasons why this choice has been precluded in most hospitals, Cunningham said. "The number of hospitals offering 'trial of labor' is diminished because of the perceived good and bad outcomes that accrue to either the mother or the fetus," he noted.

Although these outcomes are relatively rare, they include a ruptured uterus, and they can be devastating to the mother, Cunningham noted.

In many cases, access to vaginal delivery is not available to these women because of lack of money, as well as doctors' and hospitals' fear of being sued should a complication occur, he added.

In addition, some professional societies, such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) have guidelines that in some cases are impossible to follow, which have caused many hospitals to shy away from offering vaginal delivery to women who have had a Cesarean delivery, Cunningham said.

For example, the ACOG guidelines require that a surgeon and an anesthesiologist be immediately available when a woman who has had a previous C-section gives birth vaginally.

However, there's no evidence that this type of oversight is necessary or changes outcomes, Cunningham said. In any case, bad outcomes remain rare -- Cunningham estimated that there are about 10 deleterious outcomes for every 100,000 births, vaginal or otherwise.

"That doesn't mean it doesn't apply, just that there is no evidence to support that," he said. "It is a crippling rule for many hospitals and physicians, and is therefore a big driver of the problem. We hope that some of the recommendations cause some of these barriers to be removed."

Yet, there are no reliable means to spot which women are at risk for complications if they opt for vaginal delivery, the panel members noted.

"Pregnancy is something of a risky endeavor," panel member Carol J. Rowland Hogue, the Jules & Uldeen Terry Professor of Maternal and Child Health and director of Women's and Children's Center at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta, said during the teleconference.

"Women do suffer complications of pregnancy and their babies do have problems. Fortunately these are rare, but they are irrespective of mode of delivery," she said.

Panel member Dr. Nancy Frances Petit, chairwoman of the division of obstetrics at St. Francis Hospital in Newark, Del., said there is a need for women and their doctors to communicate better to decide which type of delivery is best.

"It is important for the health-care provider to share with the women, first of all, what are the capabilities of the institution that would be participating in her delivery. What is the level of comfort the health-care provider has in terms of her identified risk. It is also important that in return that he or she really takes the opportunity to listen to what the pregnant woman has to say in terms of what her desires truly are," Petit said.

More information

There's more on childbirth at the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

TUESDAY, March 9 (HealthDay News) -- As many as one in six Americans is infected with herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2), health officials said Tuesday.

HSV-2, one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the United States, is a serious, incurable infection that lasts a lifetime, causing recurrent and painful genital sores, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Preventing STDs is a public health challenge that we, as a nation, cannot afford to ignore," Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of the CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention, said Tuesday during a news conference.

The CDC estimates that 19 million new STD infections occur every year in the United States, almost half of them among young people, Fenton added.

"Young women, African Americans, and gay and bisexual men are especially hard hit," he said. "It is unacceptable that STDs remain such a widespread public health problem in the United States today."

The new findings on herpes, which were presented at the agency's 2010 National STD Prevention Conference, represent data from the 2005 to 2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which involves households from across the country.

The prevalence of HSV-2 has remained stable, at about 17 percent of the U.S. population, since the last survey, which was done from 1999 to 2004.

"This stabilization in herpes rates follows a period of declining prevalence, down from 21 percent for the years 1988 to 1994," La'Shan Taylor, an officer with the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service and author of the report, said during the news conference.

According to the report, women and blacks are the most likely to be infected. In fact, the prevalence among women was 20.9 percent, nearly twice that of men, at 11.5 percent.

Among blacks, 39.2 percent are infected, a rate more than three times that of whites, at 12.3 percent, according to the report. Black women had the highest prevalence of HSV-2, at 48 percent.

"As dark as these numbers are, they are not substantially different from CDC's previous estimates of these populations," Taylor said.

The report noted that women also are more susceptible to other sexually transmitted diseases and that the racial disparities found with HSV-2 may be due to more infections among blacks that make them more likely to be exposed to herpes.

The infection rates should also be considered serious because people with herpes are two to three times more likely to become infected with HIV and because having herpes makes it more likely that an HIV-infected person will give HIV to others, according to the CDC.

Taylor said the survey also found that the prevalence of herpes increases with age, from 1.4 percent among those aged 14 to 19 years to 26.1 percent among people aged 40 to 49. "This reflects the fact that, once you are infected with herpes, the infection is lifelong since no cure currently exists," she said.

The prevalence of herpes was also higher among those who reported having many sex partners, Taylor said. About 4 percent of those with one lifetime sex partner were found to have herpes, compared with about 27 percent of those who reported having 10 or more partners.

In addition, more than 80 percent of people infected with herpes don't know they are infected, Taylor said, in large part because symptoms can be mild or absent altogether. Symptoms also are often taken to be the sign of another infection.

But people with herpes infection can transmit it to others even if they have no signs of the disease, health officials stressed.

"This latest analysis emphasizes that we can't afford to be complacent about this infection," Dr. John M. Douglas Jr., director of CDC's division of STD prevention, said during the news conference.

"It is important that we promote steps to prevent the spread of genital herpes, not only because herpes is a lifelong and incurable infection but also because of the linkage between herpes and HIV infection."

Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at the Yale University School of Medicine, described herpes as a "bellwether for sexually transmitted diseases ... because it suggests that other such exposures may have occurred and because it increases vulnerability when they do."

"Unfortunately, we have no perfect defense against herpes since it cannot be cured and there is, as yet, no vaccine," Katz said. Though he predicted that a vaccine would eventually be developed, increased diligence is needed in the meantime, he added.

That should include "heightened awareness among both clinicians and patients, routine dialogue on the topic in all primary care settings, guidance to all patients on prevention strategies and routine availability of condoms and other barrier contraceptive devices," Katz said.

"The high prevalence of herpes, and the disparities with which it is associated, indicate we can do this job better and more equitably," he said.

Though there is no cure for HSV-2, drugs can be effective in treating and preventing outbreaks, according to the CDC. However, the agency recommends not having sex during an outbreak, using condoms and limiting the number of sex partners.

Although the CDC does not recommend that people generally be screened for herpes, it says that those at high risk for the infection might want to be screened. They include people with multiple sex partners, those who are HIV-positive, and gay or bisexual men.

Another report presented at the STD conference focused on why young women, no matter what race, appear to be reluctant to be tested for STDs.

Heather Royer, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, surveyed 302 women, 18 to 24 years old, about their beliefs about STD testing. She found that barriers to testing included:

• The majority of women (88 percent) were uncomfortable being tested by a man.
• Most women (79 percent) would prefer being tested by a specialist, not a family doctor.
• Many women (62 percent) were generally anxious about being tested.
• Some women (31 percent) were concerned that the test results would appear in their medical record.

In addition, many women had misconceptions about testing, Royer's survey found. About 40 percent thought that one test could detect as many as eight STDs, though that is not the case; about one-third incorrectly thought that chlamydia and gonorrhea could be found simply by visual inspection; and 25 percent mistakenly believed that a Pap smear could detect chlamydia and gonorrhea.

Moreover, women who said they were embarrassed to talk about sex with their doctors or fill out questionnaires about their sexual history were twice as likely to have never had an STD test, the survey found.

To reduce the stigma of STDs, Royer said that doctors should be encouraged to make sexual history part of routine care for young women.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on sexually transmitted diseases.