This is scary, lets be careful out there. Can you get it from Daty?
Syphilis cases in the United States shot up about 80 percent between 2018 and 2022, hitting numbers not seen since the 1950s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC said in a report published Tuesday that recorded syphilis cases had risen from about 115,000 in 2018 to more than 207,000 in 2022, the most recent year of available data. The recent surge compounds roughly two decades of rising cases and marks a stark reversal from the turn of the century, when many U.S. public health experts thought the disease was on the verge of being eradicated domestically.
Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted diseases and tuberculosis prevention, said in an email that the spike was driven by several factors, including decreased condom use and rising substance abuse, which he said “has been linked to less safe sexual practices.” But the primary cause, according to several experts, is a lack of funding dedicated to tackling syphilis.
CDC data shows that since 2003, the agency’s relatively stagnant STD prevention budget has been increasingly stretched due to inflation and population growth. Syphilis cases have steadily risen in tandem with those tightening financial constraints. (The CDC funds state and local health departments, as well as many other public and private agencies.)
“For many years, there have been reductions in STI screening, treatment, prevention, and partner services by health departments,” Mermin said. He attributes the cuts to “economic constraints from the Great Recession, when thousands of public health jobs were lost,” as well as the lack of funding.
“There’s a lot of complicated social factors, but the bottom line is funding,” said Jeffrey D. Klausner, a clinical professor of medicine and public health at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. “Funding goes down, syphilis goes up.”
If left untreated, syphilis leads to serious complications in about 25 percent of those infected. It can cause serious damage to the brain, heart and other vital organs, as well as blindness, deafness and paralysis.
The congenital form of the disease, transmitted through the placenta, causes stillbirth or death for about 40 percent of babies born to someone with an untreated case of the disease. Last year, the rise of congenital syphilis prompted the National Coalition of STD Directors to call on the Biden administration to declare it a public health emergency, on par with the coronavirus epidemic and the opioid crisis.
Symptoms of syphilis include painful or painless sores, rashes, fever, sore throat, swollen lymph glands, headaches and fatigue. The way the disease presents can change depending on its stage, and some experience intermittent periods of relief from symptoms. In medicine, it is often called “the great imitator” because it can look like many other diseases.
“Syphilis is notoriously difficult to diagnose. Many people can have it and have no symptoms at all,” Klausner said. “The best way to control it is through regular, routine testing,” he added, calling it a “very preventable and treatable” disease.
Condoms are generally effective for preventing transmission, which occurs through vaginal, anal or oral sex with an infected partner.
During and after World War II, the U.S. government was so concerned by a rise in syphilis infections among American soldiers that it launched several organized campaigns to combat it. Posters of this era warned servicemen and families of its deadly effects, some depicting women as temptresses who could transmit disease while others showed military vehicles blasting syphilis, represented as an enemy tank, into smithereens.
By the 1990s, syphilis was “close to elimination” in the United States, Mermin said, with cases hitting an all-time low in 2000. Ina Park, a professor at the University of California San Francisco’s Department of Family and Community Medicine, remembers graduating medical school in 2001 without meeting a single patient with the disease.
“There’s an entire generation of physicians who barely saw it, and therefore don’t really know how to recognize it,” she said.
In the past year, U.S. shortages of the antibiotic penicillin have further exacerbated syphilis treatment and driven up prices. Pfizer announced the shortage in June, citing “significant increases in demand” due to reasons including “an increase in syphilis infection rates,” and projected that supplies would recover by the third quarter of 2024.
Syphilis is known to disproportionately affect low-income communities, where individuals are less likely to have health insurance or may delay treatment for fear of steep medical bills. As a result, many people “only go in to get tested or get a checkup if they don’t feel well or if they get sick,” Klausner said, which creates more opportunity for the disease to be transmitted.
“There has been a general lack of advocacy, because the people affected by syphilis are generally not those in power,” Park said.
More than a third of syphilis cases occur in men who have sex with men, in part because this group is more likely to have multiple recent sexual partners and because sexually transmitted diseases can circulate more easily among smaller social networks. But experts are also increasingly seeing the disease spread within heterosexual networks, according to Park.
“Right now, the heterosexual epidemic is linked a lot more to substance use and poverty, issues like homelessness and incarceration, and these are the factors that have been associated with pregnant women and people who have babies,” she said.
In its Tuesday report, the CDC recorded an 8.7 percent decrease in known gonorrhea cases between 2021 and 2022, the first reported decline in at least a decade. Though it could be a sign of progress, experts say the numbers could reflect a lack of testing – especially among women, who usually do not experience symptoms.
“A lot of gonorrhea is asymptomatic and so it’s only identified through screening, and we know that screening services have declined,” Klausner said. “It’s a bit early to call it a trend.”
torontosun.com
Syphilis cases in the United States shot up about 80 percent between 2018 and 2022, hitting numbers not seen since the 1950s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC said in a report published Tuesday that recorded syphilis cases had risen from about 115,000 in 2018 to more than 207,000 in 2022, the most recent year of available data. The recent surge compounds roughly two decades of rising cases and marks a stark reversal from the turn of the century, when many U.S. public health experts thought the disease was on the verge of being eradicated domestically.
Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted diseases and tuberculosis prevention, said in an email that the spike was driven by several factors, including decreased condom use and rising substance abuse, which he said “has been linked to less safe sexual practices.” But the primary cause, according to several experts, is a lack of funding dedicated to tackling syphilis.
CDC data shows that since 2003, the agency’s relatively stagnant STD prevention budget has been increasingly stretched due to inflation and population growth. Syphilis cases have steadily risen in tandem with those tightening financial constraints. (The CDC funds state and local health departments, as well as many other public and private agencies.)
“For many years, there have been reductions in STI screening, treatment, prevention, and partner services by health departments,” Mermin said. He attributes the cuts to “economic constraints from the Great Recession, when thousands of public health jobs were lost,” as well as the lack of funding.
“There’s a lot of complicated social factors, but the bottom line is funding,” said Jeffrey D. Klausner, a clinical professor of medicine and public health at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. “Funding goes down, syphilis goes up.”
If left untreated, syphilis leads to serious complications in about 25 percent of those infected. It can cause serious damage to the brain, heart and other vital organs, as well as blindness, deafness and paralysis.
The congenital form of the disease, transmitted through the placenta, causes stillbirth or death for about 40 percent of babies born to someone with an untreated case of the disease. Last year, the rise of congenital syphilis prompted the National Coalition of STD Directors to call on the Biden administration to declare it a public health emergency, on par with the coronavirus epidemic and the opioid crisis.
Symptoms of syphilis include painful or painless sores, rashes, fever, sore throat, swollen lymph glands, headaches and fatigue. The way the disease presents can change depending on its stage, and some experience intermittent periods of relief from symptoms. In medicine, it is often called “the great imitator” because it can look like many other diseases.
“Syphilis is notoriously difficult to diagnose. Many people can have it and have no symptoms at all,” Klausner said. “The best way to control it is through regular, routine testing,” he added, calling it a “very preventable and treatable” disease.
Condoms are generally effective for preventing transmission, which occurs through vaginal, anal or oral sex with an infected partner.
During and after World War II, the U.S. government was so concerned by a rise in syphilis infections among American soldiers that it launched several organized campaigns to combat it. Posters of this era warned servicemen and families of its deadly effects, some depicting women as temptresses who could transmit disease while others showed military vehicles blasting syphilis, represented as an enemy tank, into smithereens.
By the 1990s, syphilis was “close to elimination” in the United States, Mermin said, with cases hitting an all-time low in 2000. Ina Park, a professor at the University of California San Francisco’s Department of Family and Community Medicine, remembers graduating medical school in 2001 without meeting a single patient with the disease.
“There’s an entire generation of physicians who barely saw it, and therefore don’t really know how to recognize it,” she said.
In the past year, U.S. shortages of the antibiotic penicillin have further exacerbated syphilis treatment and driven up prices. Pfizer announced the shortage in June, citing “significant increases in demand” due to reasons including “an increase in syphilis infection rates,” and projected that supplies would recover by the third quarter of 2024.
Syphilis is known to disproportionately affect low-income communities, where individuals are less likely to have health insurance or may delay treatment for fear of steep medical bills. As a result, many people “only go in to get tested or get a checkup if they don’t feel well or if they get sick,” Klausner said, which creates more opportunity for the disease to be transmitted.
“There has been a general lack of advocacy, because the people affected by syphilis are generally not those in power,” Park said.
More than a third of syphilis cases occur in men who have sex with men, in part because this group is more likely to have multiple recent sexual partners and because sexually transmitted diseases can circulate more easily among smaller social networks. But experts are also increasingly seeing the disease spread within heterosexual networks, according to Park.
“Right now, the heterosexual epidemic is linked a lot more to substance use and poverty, issues like homelessness and incarceration, and these are the factors that have been associated with pregnant women and people who have babies,” she said.
In its Tuesday report, the CDC recorded an 8.7 percent decrease in known gonorrhea cases between 2021 and 2022, the first reported decline in at least a decade. Though it could be a sign of progress, experts say the numbers could reflect a lack of testing – especially among women, who usually do not experience symptoms.
“A lot of gonorrhea is asymptomatic and so it’s only identified through screening, and we know that screening services have declined,” Klausner said. “It’s a bit early to call it a trend.”
U.S. syphilis numbers are at their highest since the 1950s: CDC
Syphilis cases in the United States shot up about 80 percent between 2018 and 2022, according to the CDC.
torontosun.com
