Some 98 per cent of college students who have casual sex while abroad do so under the influence of alcohol, new research has found.
Some 79 per cent of the group surveyed said they had drunk excessively before engaging in casual sex.
The study of more than 300 students was carried out by Ruth Buckley of the Guide sexual health clinic at St James's Hospital, Dublin, last year.
She found that 30 per cent of students had casual sex while abroad. Some 35 per cent of this group said they did not use protection.
While casual sex was more common among single people, those already in a relationship at home were more likely to have unprotected casual sex.
Ms Buckley found that the students had a lower than expected perception of risk, given their behaviour.
Some 63 per cent of men felt this behaviour was risky, while 79 per cent of women perceived the risk.
The study was conducted because of the increasing number of students travelling abroad.
Ms Buckley called for a health promotion campaign challenging how holidays were promoted. She also recommended the highlighting of the influence of alcohol and drugs on sexual health.
The research is being displayed at the three-day joint conference of the British HIV Association and the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV, which concludes in Dublin today. The Guide clinic also presented research on the effect of HIV on the older population.
Prof Fiona Mulcahy, director of the clinic, said the research highlighted how patients could not be typecast by medical staff.
The hospital's HIV clinic has 27 patients aged 60 years and over.
The study interviewed 12 of these, including one 81-year-old man.
She said a geriatric clinic seeing an 81-year-old would never associate his age group with HIV infection.
Of the 12 patients, six had contracted the infection from bisexual contact, five from heterosexual contact and one from a blood transfusion. The research found that HIV diagnosis led to the onset of insomnia in half of the patients, while one third described "significant anxiety symptoms".
Nine of the 12 patients interviewed had been having sex before diagnosis, but just one still had sex after diagnosis, the study found.
