Gonorrhea

The CDC’s announcement that 2018 marked the United States’ fifth straight record-breaking year for cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis was the week’s top story in infectious disease.

Around 2.4 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis were reported in the United States in 2018, marking the fifth straight record-breaking year for STDs in the country, the CDC announced today.

Researchers at the NIH recently highlighted the need for a “refocused and enhanced research portfolio directed at the development of innovative diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines for STIs.”

The clinical trial design for testing new urogenital gonorrhea treatments needs to be re-evaluated, researchers said.

Findings from a state-of-the-art review showed that doxycycline prophylaxis may be a promising strategy to prevent bacterial STIs.

Researchers found no association between frequent pubic hair grooming and STI prevalence among female students at one Midwestern college, according to study results published in PLoS One.

An Australian study that enrolled initially HIV-negative men who have sex with men, or MSM, showed that repeated and single rectal gonorrhea infections were associated with an increased risk for HIV infection, suggesting that preventive interventions be emphasized among MSM with a history of rectal gonorrhea, researchers said.

In this video, Jeanne Marrazzo, MD, MPH, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, discusses her presentation at ASM Microbe on sexually transmitted infections, which focused, in part, on the “current epidemic” of these infections among patients with HIV.

ATLANTA — HIV diagnoses are common among men who have sex with men seeking care at local STD clinics and occur more frequently in those also diagnosed with an STD infection, according to surveillance data presented at the CDC’s National HIV Prevention Conference.