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STD epidemic slows as new syphilis and gonorrhea cases fall in US

There's some good news about sexually-transmitted diseases in newly released U.S. health data. The syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically las

AP News

The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday. The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.

Syphilis is at its highest levels since the 1950s. Here's how experts are trying to fix that.

Doctors and public health workers across the U.S. are racing to develop innovative and unconventional strategies to test and treat people fo

NBC News

It was spring 2023, and Dr. Irene Stafford had been called to the ER for what should have been a routine delivery. But Stafford, a maternal-fetal medicine physician at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston, quickly realized something was wrong: She couldn’t find a heartbeat. The unborn baby boy had already died in the womb.  Soon after, the mother’s syphilis test — given to all women before delivery — came back positive. The infection had been silently passed from mother to son. It’s a death, Stafford said, that could’ve been prevented with early detection and a shot of penicillin.  Syphilis, a sexually transmitted infection, was nearly eliminated in the U.S. at the beginning of the 21st century but has made a dramatic comeback. In 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 200,000 syphilis cases — the highest counts since 1950. Congenital syphilis has similarly increased tenfold over the past decade, the CDC says, even though 90% of cases are fully preventable.