CDC official: Gay men’s disease rates highest since 1980s HIV/AIDS outbreak
Men who have sex with men face a syphilis
infection rate at the highest it’s been since the 1980s, according to a Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official.
“We’re concerned about our high levels of
syphilis among men who have sex with men – really we’re back to the level of
disease – burden of disease – in gay men that we were seeing before HIV in this
country,” said Gail Bolan, director of the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention, at
an event lobbying for federal funding to fight sexually transmitted diseases in
the United States. The comments were reported by CNS News.
Some groups bear a disproportionate burden of
STDs, according to a 2014 CDC
fact sheet, and “While anyone can become
infected with an STD, certain groups, including young people and gay and
bisexual men, are at greatest risk.”
In a section of the fact sheet on the
“Troubling rise in syphilis infections among men, particularly gay and bisexual
men,” the CDC wrote, “Trend data show rates of syphilis are increasing at an
alarming rate (15.1 percent in 2014). While rates have increased among both men
and women, men account for more than 90 percent of all primary and secondary
syphilis cases. Men who have sex with men (MSM) account for 83 percent of male
cases where the sex of the sex partner is known.”
According to the CDC,
“Having more sex partners compared to other men means gay and bisexual men have
more opportunities to have sex with someone who can transmit HIV or another
STD.”
In 2013, Vancouver Coastal Health and the
British Columbia Centre for Disease Control said that levels
of syphilis infections in homosexual and bisexual men were the highest they’d
been in more than 30 years in the Vancouver area. In 2015, the Public
Health England also released a
study indicating
a sharp increase in syphilis and gonorrhea among gay men.
