14 DAY TRIAL // After decades of achievements in the field of new and effective drugs against maladies, we've got a kind of confidence that can make us more vulnerable to infections.
Today, syphilis is easy to treat, but we must not forget that if untreated, this is a lethal disease. After ages of successful fighting against syphilis, researchers now warn that statistics indicate an increasing level of syphilis among gay and bisexual men.
The US syphilis cases had dropped from 50,578 in 1990 to just 7,177 in 2003, due to an intense nationwide prevention campaign targeting the heterosexuals while among the gay men population, these levels have risen significantly in this decade.
"The entire nation was caught unawares," said study lead author Dr. James Heffelfinger, a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"You're concentrating on one population, but the next thing you know, you start seeing a large increase among another group."
Another concern is that syphilis turns the infected ones more vulnerable to HIV infection, even if researches on this have not still been made. The syphilis rate had dropped enormously from 1990 to 2000 with 90 %, from a ratio of 20.3 cases for 100,000 people to 2.1. This was linked also to a drop in cocaine consume, as many of these addicts prostituted to get the money for the drug.
But statistics indicated a rise of the syphilis levels of 19 % from 2000 to 2003, but a very differentiate one: women were keeping on the descendant trend, by 53 %, while the men percentage rose by 62 %. The disconnected infection levels between men and women made the researchers estimate that about 62 % of the newly infected ones are gay or bisexual.
"The study does not look past 2003, but statistics suggest the trends continued through 2005," said Heffelfinger.
In 2005, 8,724 new cases of syphilis were recorded in US.
"Rates among gay men could be going up for several reasons, including illicit drug use and "safe-sex fatigue. In addition, prevention messages might have been "drowned out" by talk about how medications are doing a great job of keeping AIDS patients alive. We've been seduced by these amazing drugs and we've fallen behind in our prevention efforts. We have to get back on track with prevention messages. That's the only way we will curb this outbreak." explained Dr. Khalil Ghanem, assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.