The number of people diagnosed with STIs shoots up after the Christmas holidays, a leading expert in sexual health has said. 

Speaking on The Pat Kenny Show, Dr Aisling Loy there is a lot of sexual activity over the festive season. 

“It more presents in early January,” she said. 

“But you do get them coming in around this time because of all the Christmas parties and the socialising that starts towards the end of November, the start of December. 

“It can sometimes take two to three weeks for symptoms to manifest, so they tend to manifest around Christmas week - which is the week many clinics shut.” 

Party season

Dr Loy said people go out more than they usually would in December because of Christmas parties, reunions and pub crawls. 

These events usually involve alcohol and that gives people a “bit of Dutch courage” to approach the person they’ve fancied for some time. 

Often this also means they’re not expecting to have sex and they have it without a condom. 

“They’re not prepared,” Dr Loy said. 

“They’re not taking precautions with condoms and people get a bit too merry and, unfortunately, they pick up an infection."

Get tested

If you do have unprotected sex, Dr Loy said it important to get tested - but not straight away. 

“If you had unprotected sex at the weekend and woke up on Tuesday or Wednesday and thought, ‘Goodness, that was a risky thing to do, I should test,’” she said.  

“If you test too soon, you might get a false negative, so it can take up to two weeks for things like chlamydia and gonorrhoea to show in these tests.

“Three months for things like syphilis, hepatitis and HIV you have to wait 42 days.” 

Dr Loy also cautioned that many STIs are asymptomatic and many people will have no idea they have picked one up. 

“Don’t just wait for there to be symptoms that you have something,” she said. 

“If you’ve had any unprotected sex, you should test.” 

For those who do contract an STI, there can be “significant consequences” to not getting it treated. 

“To be honest, women bear the burden of STI consequences more than men,” she said. 

“Men can get things like epididymo-orchitis but for women, it’s more that it can affect their fertility in the future, they can get pelvic inflammatory disease.” 

In the early part of 2023, there was a significant increase in STIs. 

In the first nine months of the year, the number of people contracting gonorrhoea was up 95% on the same period in 2022; for chlamydia, the figure was 43% higher.