HHS closes CDC lab that tracks STIs, alarming experts
Key takeaways:
- HHS layoffs last week gutted a CDC lab dedicated to tracking STIs, including drug-resistant gonorrhea.
- The lab is only one of three in the world that performs this function.
The Trump administration has shut down a CDC laboratory dedicated to tracking STIs, which experts said could weaken the country’s ability to keep an eye on drug-resistant infections, including gonorrhea.
“The lab ... is kind of the cornerstone of much of the work that we do,” Joseph N. Cherabie, MD, MSc, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at Washington University in St. Louis and medical director of two clinics dedicated to HIV and STI prevention, told Healio.
Last week, multiple outlets reported that workers at the CDC’s top STI lab were included in the mass layoffs initiated by HHS under new health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
According to The New York Times, dozens of CDC freezers containing around 1,000 STI samples were left unattended because of the job cuts. The paper reported that 77 scientists working on STIs were fired; another report by STAT said all 28 full-time employees of the STI lab were let go.
David C. Harvey, MSW, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors, called the firings “alarming” and a “critical loss of an essential public health function that the federal government should be providing to protect the health of all Americans.”
“The lab closure removes one of the critical tools we use to protect people from drug-resistant infections at the same time our ability to prevent STIs has been set back by massive cuts and layoffs,” Harvey told Healio. “We are urging Secretary Kennedy to reinstate these labs and staff in order to protect the public against the ongoing STI epidemic and other infectious diseases.”
Multiple messages to the CDC and HHS seeking confirmation of the cuts were not returned.
Harvey noted that the CDC lab is one of only three in the world that tracks drug-resistant STIs. It acted as the country’s “home base” for this type of surveillance and a place where states could validate their STI testing to ensure it catches “tricky” cases — something like the drug-resistant strain of gonorrhea that popped up in Massachusetts a couple of years ago that showed reduced susceptibility to five classes of antibiotics.
“The reality is that losing the STI lab will affect everyday health care and make it harder to identify dangerous infections,” Harvey said.
According to an impact summary compiled by STI advocates and provided to Healio, the functions provided by the CDC lab do not exist anywhere else in the United States. The lab is home to 50,000 unique gonorrhea isolates, the largest such collection in the world, according to the summary. Closing it means the country will be unprepared for any changes in gonorrhea that might affect treatment, and for new outbreaks of other sexually transmitted infections such as mpox, Cherabie said.
“We’ve always used this lab as kind of like the center of our universe,” he said. “We know that we can always reach out to the CDC to get some answers.”
The closure came months after a CDC report indicated that the tide may be turning on what has been a yearslong worsening of the STI epidemic in the United States. The country has hovered around 2 million or more reported cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis each year since at least 2015, setting records during many of those years. But the 2024 STI report (which summarized data from 2023) showed overall gains against the three infections, with cases declining to 2.4 million — a 1.8% reduction compared with the previous year.
The decline, which experts cautioned could be a mirage, was driven by a 7.2% decrease in reported cases of gonorrhea — the second year in a row that cases went down. (Cases of chlamydia also ticked down, but only by 0.1%, and cases of syphilis — including congenital syphilis, which has exploded in recent years — increased by 1%.)
Still, even if the reduction in cases is real, the specter of potentially untreatable gonorrhea remains. Experts have long fretted over gonorrhea’s ability to develop resistance to every new drug that is developed to fight it, and only one remains.
Since 2020, the CDC has recommended a single 500 mg intramuscular dose of ceftriaxone by itself to treat gonorrhea. For around a decade, the agency recommended an additional antibiotic, azithromycin, along with ceftriaxone as a way to treat gonorrhea plus any potential chlamydia coinfections, but it dropped the other antibiotic from its recommendation in December 2020 as a stewardship measure.
In lieu of effective treatments, scientists have been exploring other ways to fight gonorrhea — and STIs in general.
The CDC last year began recommending that some people receive doxycycline as post-exposure prophylaxis for chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis based on mounting evidence that it can reduce the rates of STIs. The intervention, known as doxy-PEP, involves taking the antibiotic within 3 days of having unprotected sex. But it is only recommended as an intervention for transgender women and men who have sex with men, and the evidence that it works against gonorrhea is iffy.
In addition, researchers are studying the ability of a meningococcal B vaccine to offer cross-protection against gonorrhea in an NIH-sponsored trial that has finished enrolling around 2,600 participants and should be completed next year. The trial was initially inspired by real-world evidence from New Zealand that a MenB vaccination campaign there also drove down rates of gonorrhea.
In the meantime, with the CDC lab closed, Cherabie said drug-resistant gonorrhea will be able to spread without a way to monitor it.
“And by the time we do catch it,” he said, “it would have already slipped under the radar for quite some time, which is quite startling and scary, if you really think about it.”
References:
- Branswell H. CDC’s top laboratory on sexually transmitted diseases is shut by Trump administration. STAT. https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/05/cdc-sexually-transmitted-diseases-laboratory-closed-by-trump-administration/. April 5, 2025.
- Mandavilli A. A federal lab that tracked rising S.T.I.s has been shuttered. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/health/cdc-sti-lab-gonorrhea.html. April 4, 2025.
- Safety and efficacy study of meningococcal group B vaccine rMenB+OMV NZ (Bexsero) to prevent gonococcal infection. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT04350138. https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04350138. Updated April 4, 2025. Accessed April 9, 2025.
Collapse
Healio Interviews