From The National Association of STD Directors (NASTAD) comes a new fact sheet, which begins with this:
For several decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has closely monitored gonorrhea and its potential to become resistant to available antibiotics. Gonorrhea is one of the most commonly reported communicable diseases in the United States. In 2011, there were 321,849 reported cases and another 400,000 estimated unreported cases. If left untreated, the illness can cause infertility in both women and men, dangerous pregnancy complications and can be passed on to newborns, possibly causing blindness or pneumonia. Gonorrhea can also facilitate HIV transmission.
The CDC now reports that gonorrhea has become resistant to all but one of the antibiotics recommended to treat it, and resistance to the remaining antibiotic is increasing. If no new antibiotics become available, gonorrhea has the potential to become a serious epidemic. However, by increasing public health infrastructure investment and encouraging pharmaceutical companies to create new antibiotics, we can prevent a public health emergency.
The CDC reported that the number of new cases of HIV among black women declined 21 percent between 2008 and 2010, while the incidence of HIV among young gay and bisexual men rose by 22 percent in the same time frame. The rate of HIV infections among black women remains 20 times higher than the number of new cases in white women, and HIV-infected black women account for 70 percent of HIV incidence among all women. Men who have sex with men comprised almost two-thirds of all new HIV infections in 2010.
Joseph Prejean, chief of the Behavioral and Clinical Surveillance Branch in CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, attributed the decline in new HIV cases among black women to HIV testing and the success of HIV
Drugs (Photo credit: Images_of_Money)
awareness campaigns. “Treatment advances” for AIDS may have caused young men to underestimate their risk and the health threat posed by HIV”, said Prejean. Although anti-retroviral treatment prolongs life, HIV-infected individuals can expect to take medicine for the rest of their lives, at an estimated lifetime cost of $400,000. (emphasis mine)
Young black men who have sex with men have the highest HIV incidence of any population group within the United States. An earlier CDC report stated that 26 percent of new HIV cases occurred among young people age 13 to 24. Half of HIV-infected young people do not know their HIV status, reported CDC Director Thomas Frieden, MD.
Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released updated guidelines for the treatment of the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea, which is a major cause of pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, and infertility and can facilitate HIV transmission.[i] CDC estimates there are more than 700,000 gonorrhea infections each year in the United States. The updated guidelines were published in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
The change marks an end to CDC exclusively recommending oral antibiotic treatment as the first line of defense for gonorrhea, and now instead recommends that infections be treated with the injectable antibiotic ceftriaxone in combination with one of two other oral antibiotics, either doxycycline or azithromycin. This change in treatment has significant implications for clinical service delivery and infected patients alike, as the simple act of taking pills is replaced by an administered injection by a certified health professional.
“We applaud the CDC’s preemptive strike of changing recommended treatment and with the intention of extending the life of the last effective drug,” said William Smith, Executive Director of the National Coalition of STD Directors (NCSD). “However, the rising resistance of gonorrhea to our last line of defense against it must be a clarion call to policymakers and private industry alike to invest in the research and development pipeline for new antibiotics and more sophisticated diagnostics…and quickly. We desperately need additional options to meet the challenges of this infection,” continued Smith.
Last summer, the CDC sounded the alarm on gonorrhea’s rising resistance to antimicrobials. This report outlined that we are on the verge of a highly untreatable gonorrhea epidemic as gonorrhea has developed resistance to every class of antibiotics put up against it and there is no new drug in the pipeline. Documented increases in resistance throughout the U.S. are what has prompted the CDC to make the current recommended treatment change.
More than 2 million people are incarcerated in jails and prisons in the United States.
People who are incarcerated are at increased risk for acquiring and transmitting HIV.
The correctional setting is often the first place incarcerated men and women are diagnosed with HIV and provided treatment.
People who are incarcerated are at increased risk for acquiring and transmitting HIV and other infections. Correctional health, public health, and community-based organizations need to improve HIV prevention and care for incarcerated populations through 1) routine HIV screening and voluntary HIV testing within prisons and jails and 2) other effective prevention strategies, including those that address inmates’ transition back into the community. Correctional institutions can be important partners in preventing and treating HIV to protect and improve inmate and community health.
“Sex Is the Question,” is an engaging and important survey regarding the sexual practices of gay and bisexual men. This entirely confidential survey is sponsored by the Center for Disease Control, and will be used by state and local health departments to better understand the HIV epidemic among gay and bisexual men and potentially create new techniques to reverse the trend. “Sex Is the Question” is the largest survey ever attempted by a US federal agency for gay and bisexual men, and it will only take you a few minutes to complete. Do you want another great reason to take the survey? For every completed survey, “Sex Is the Question” will make a monetary donation to the It Gets Better Project.
How can you take the survey?Just click on this link. After you complete the survey, you will also have the opportunity to invite your friends to participate, and a donation will be made to the It Gets Better Project for each of your friends who completes the survey too. In addition, “Sex is the Question” is not just a survey. It is the first study of its kind to provide immediate feedback to its participants by incorporating videos and other interactive tools. At the end of the survey, you will be presented with personalized insight and comparisons based on your answers. Thank you for your consideration! With you support, we can help put an end to HIV once and for all, and in doing so, support a terrific organization.
Earlier this week, when the CDC announced a record low in the teen birth rate, it listed two possible causes: “The impact of strong pregnancy prevention messages” and “increased use of contraception.” The Guttmacher Institute came out with an even stronger message: “The most recent decline in teen births can be linked almost exclusively to improvements in teens’ contraceptive use,” the organization said in a press release, which pointed to another CDC study for evidence.
But that hasn’t stopped conservatives from claiming that the drop is a result of, you guessed it, abstinence education and, paradoxically, an increase in abortions.
Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America expressed her outrage over the CDC analysis: “They don’t even mention the fact there’s been a tremendous increase in effectiveness and pervasiveness of abstinence education. They don’t mention the fact that teen sexual activity, by their own admission, is down.” As Think Progress noted this week, teen birth rates are actually highest in states with abstinence-only policies. Not only has it been widely documented that such programs are largely ineffective, it’s also been shown that such programsmay prevent contraception use.
Now, it’s true that teens — specifically 15- and 16-year-olds — are delaying sexual activity, but the change in contraceptive use over the years has been much more profound, and there has been no significant change in sexual activity among 18- and 19-year-olds. What’s more, there was no change in sexual activity among teens, period, from 2008 on, says Laura Lindberg, senior research associate at Guttmacher, so the recent decline in teens births certainly can’t be attributed to abstinence. Also, it should be noted that abstinence can be the result of any number of social influences, not necessarily abstinence-only education. (Consider research showing that teens who receive sex educationare much more likely to delay sex.)