The U.S. Hasn ’ t Seen Syphilis Numbers This High Since 1950

NEW YORK — The U.S. syphilis epidemic isn’t abating, with the rate of infectious cases rising 9% in 2022, according to a new federal government report on sexually transmitted diseases in adults. But there’s some unexpected good news: The rate of new gonorrhea cases fell for the first time in a decade. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] It’s not clear why syphilis rose 9% while gonorrhea dropped 9%, officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, adding that it’s too soon to know whether a new downward trend is emerging for the latter. They are most focused on syphilis, which is less common than gonorrhea or chlamydia but considered more dangerous. Total cases surpassed 207,000 in 2022, the highest count in the United States since 1950, according to data released Tuesday. And while it continues to have a disproportionate impact on gay and bisexual men, it is expanding in heterosexual men and women, and increasingly affecting newborns, too, CDC officials said. Syphilis is a bacterial disease that can surface as painless genital sores but can ultimately lead to paralysis, hearing loss, dementia and even death if left untreated. New syphilis infections plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when antibiotics became widely available and fell to their lowest by 1998. About 59,000 of the 2022 cases involved the most infectious forms of syphilis. Of those, about a quarter were women and near...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate wire Source Type: news