Sexually Transmitted Infection

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force issued a draft recommendation encouraging physicians to screen for chlamydia and gonorrhea in all sexually active women aged 24 years and younger.

Despite national guidelines recommending that sexually active people with HIV be tested annually for STIs, many transgender women with HIV are not tested for syphilis, chlamydia or gonorrhea, researchers reported.

Moderna said that its COVID-19 vaccine protects against newly emerging variants, but it will study the possibility of using a booster dose to enhance immunity. The announcement was the top story in infectious disease last week.

A positive STI test may indicate a higher risk for hepatitis C virus reinfection among patients with HIV being treated with direct-acting antivirals, study findings published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases suggest.

Only about half of patients who were seen at a sexual health center and subsequently referred to HIV PrEP attended an initial visit, indicating the need to fine-tune the PrEP referral process, researchers reported at IDWeek.

A complete sexual history was taken at less than 2% of initial visits to a primary care physician in 2015 in the United States, and HIV testing occurred at less than 1% of PCP office visits annually from 2009 to 2017, data show.

Vaginal swab samples collected by patients performed similarly to lab-based molecular diagnostics for chlamydia and gonorrhea testing, therefore supporting the use of a new 30-minute point-of-case assay, according to findings published in JAMA Network Open.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of 29 studies published over the course of 30 years showed that sexual health interventions among black adolescents were significantly associated with improvements in abstinence, condom use and sexual health knowledge.

One dose of the HPV vaccine appeared to be as effective as multiple doses in preventing preinvasive cervical disease among adolescents vaccinated between ages 15 and 19 years, according to results of a retrospective study published in Cancer.

Researchers found high rates of sexually transmitted hepatitis C among HIV-negative men who have sex with men who used pre-exposure prophylaxis, especially among drug users, according to data published in Journal of Hepatology.