STD rates in SF continue to climb

According to preliminary data the Department of Public Health released last week, the number of cases of Chlamydia, gonorrhea, and early syphilis all increased last year compared to the number of cases reported in 2009.

Overall reported Chlamydia increased from 4,171 to 4,591 cases (a rise of 10 percent) while male rectal Chlamydia increased in 2010 from 740 to 913 cases for a 23.4 percent annual increase. Reported gonorrhea cases increased 9.8 percent from 1,787 in 2009 to 1,963 in 2010.

Additionally, rectal gonorrhea among men also increased from 448 cases to 476 cases, a 6.3 percent year-to-year increase. After recent declines in early syphilis seen in 2008, early syphilis cases sharply increased by 27.4 percent in 2010, from 519 cases to 661. The total number of all syphilis cases last year was 764 compared to 632 in 2009.

The final tallies for STD rates will not be known until later this year with the publication of the 2010 Annual Summary.

As the Bay Area Reporter reported last November, health officials are at a loss to explain what is driving the spikes in STDs. The city's STD chief, Dr. Susan Philip, noted at the time that STD rates historically have fluctuated and the current incidents could be due to more people getting tested.

At the same time Philip has seen her budget slashed due to the city and country's ongoing fiscal crisis. With less staffing, she has turned to using social media to supplement the work her section is doing.

Health officials recommend all sexually active gay and bisexual men be tested for STDs every three to six months. Additionally, all women 25 years old and younger should be screened for Chlamydia at least annually.

Syphilis Infections On The Rise

Reports of syphilis contraction are on the rise, according to a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a report released on Tuesday, the CDC says that there has been a 39 percent increase in the amount of people who contracted the disease from 2006 to 2009, with most new cases appearing in young black men.

Rise in syphilis prompts education forum

The community forum, to be held on Wednesday, November 24, will explore the complex issues around prevention, risk reduction, testing and notifying partners.

Recent figures indicate that in the year to March 2009, approximately 750 diagnoses of syphilis were made in Australia. Experts believe that the numbers are considerably higher.

A panel of specialists will be on hand to provide up-to-date information and available to respond to questions. Among them are ACON’s Geoff Honnor and Dr Fraser Drummond from the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research.

Syphilis: Top 5 Symptoms

The entire lifecycle of syphilis has five parts: primary syphilis, secondary syphilis, latent syphilis, tertiary syphilis, and neurosyphilis. Each of these five stages has symptoms that can be diagnosed independently.

The primary stage of syphilis, which occurs due to sexual contact with an infected individual, includes skin lesions or ulcers generally on the genitalia of the infected individual, but can also occur at any other location on the body. These syphilis ulcers, referred to as chancre, are firm and painless even though they may persist for four to seven weeks.

Columbus cleared of bringing syphilis to Europe

A long-held theory has it that Christopher Columbus and his crew returned to Europe in 1493 from their trip to the Americas bringing syphilis with them, and research reported in PhysOrg in 2008 also suggested Columbus was to blame. Now an excavation of skeletons in a London cemetery has unearthed seven skeletons that suggest the disease was present in Europe nearly two centuries earlier.

U.S. apologizes for experiment that infected Guatemalans with syphilis

The United States apologized to Guatemala on Friday for a 1940s research program in which Guatemalans were intentionally infected with the sexually transmitted disease syphilis without their knowledge or consent.

Between 1946 and 1948, the agency then known as the U.S. Public Health Service infected Guatemalan sex workers, prison inmates, and mental health patients with syphilis. The program was conducted in order to examine whether penicillin, relatively new at the time, could be used to treat the disease. It was led by John Cutler, the U.S. doctor who later led the infamous Tuskegee experiment, in which African American men in Alabama infected with syphilis were observed without receiving treatment.

Guidelines for treatment of syphilis in patients with HIV have very poor evidence base

Current guidelines for the treatment of syphilis in patients with HIV are based on limited clinical data, investigators show in the online edition of Sexually Transmitted Infections.

Even though their systematic review had broad inclusion criteria, they were only able to identify 23 studies examining the outcomes of HIV-positive patients treated for syphilis. Only two of these studies were rated as “high quality” by the investigators.

Rates of treatment failure varied considerably, and were as high as 31% for latent syphilis. However, the investigators believe that confounding factors rather than the poor efficacy of treatment are the likely explanation for this.