Syphilis infections in the United States dropped significantly in the 1990s, but cases have been on the upsurge again in recent years. So what’s the cause?
Many health officials don’t know.
MSN News reports that cases of this syphilis have been rising steadily across the country, based on information from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Analyzing public health data through the year 2013, the CDC observed that the incidences of primary and secondary syphilis rose by 10 percent in the period between 2012 and 2013 only. That rate was more than two times as high as rates seen from 2001.
Syphilis incidents vary from place to place, with the Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami and Orlando metropolitan areas having some of the highest cases across the country. Other areas with high rates include Portland, San Antonio, San Diego and San Francisco.
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Reported cases of syphilis, which can cause severe health complications, surged and nearly doubled to over 800 cases four years after in the San Francisco Bay Area. A minimum of 15 cases of ocular syphilis, which can lead to blindness, have been reported in the states of California and Washington in the last few months.
A decline in the use of condoms is one obvious culprit. The percentage of men who have sex with men estimated to have had unprotected anal sex within the previous 12 months rose from 48 percent in 2005…
…to 57 percent in 2011, according to the CDC. But while it is clear that syphilis is spreading fast, and that it is spreading especially among men having sex with men, public health and medical experts still don’t know the answers to some really basic and important questions.
“We haven’t really seen enough data to help us understand why there is this increase,” says Jay Laudato, executive director of the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, which provides health care to New York’s LGBT communities.
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One theory is that the disease may be spreading in part because HIV-positive gay men are choosing to have unprotected sex with HIV-positive partners, a phenomenon called seroadaptation or serosorting. In one important respect, this is a laudable risk-reduction strategy that can protect exposing HIV-negative people to HIV. But it can also put HIV-positive men at greater risk for STIs like syphilis. Many of the men having sex with men diagnosed with syphilis, CDC data indicate, are also HIV-positive.
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