SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - FEMALE arts students at university are the most sexually active while male science students are the most likely to be virgins, Australian researchers said on Thursday.

A pilot study at the University of Sydney asked 185 students aged 16 to 25 about their sexual history and awareness of the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia, the national AAP news agency reported.

Arts students were 'more likely to be sexually active and to report having little or no knowledge of chlamydia,' said the study, published in the journal Sexual Health.

'Males in the study were less likely to have had sex as a group compared to the group of females in the sample.' Science students were also less likely to have had sex compared to their counterparts in other faculties, the study found.

'Who are the people at unis that go to the rave parties and the bar? It's not the nerdy boy science students,' commented psychotherapist Stephen Carroll.

'They're carrying on doing their experiments, going to the library or doing their assignments,' he said.

Researcher Melissa Kang had previously found that infection rates in women aged 20 to 24 quadrupled from 335 cases per 100,000 people in 1999, to 1,300 per 100,000 people last year. -- AFP