For the fifth consecutive year, combined cases of three STDs — gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis — have risen in the United States, according to a Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance Report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published Tuesday.
Although the CDC limits its mention to a footnote to its charts, the District of Columbia leads the way in every single one of these STDs — gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis.
“Combined they total 2.4 million infections that were diagnosed and reported just in last year alone,” said Elizabeth Torrone, a CDC epidemiologist who worked on the new report, adding that the combined number marks “the most cases” ever recorded since monitoring began in the United States.
Looked at state by state, California ranks 13th and Nevada 14th in reported cases of Chlamydia, well behind states such as Alaska (#1), Louisiana (#2), Mississippi (#3), Georgia (#7), Illinois (#9), New York (#10) and Maryland (#12). Florida ranks 29th and West Virginia has the lowest rate.
The D.C. per capita rate is 50% higher than Alaska’s.
As for Gonorrhea rates, Nevada ranks 12th, and California ranks 14th, once again behind states such as Mississippi (#1), Alaska (#2), Alabama (#4), Louisiana (#5), and Arkansas (#8). Florida ranks 29th and Vermont has the lowest rate.
The D.C. per capita rate is nearly twice that of Mississippi’s.
In reported cases of Primary and Secondary Syphilis, however the stats are a bit different: Nevada ranks highest, with California at #2. Mississippi ranks 3rd, Georgia ranks 4th, and Florida comes in at #8, Vermont has the lowest rate.
The D.C. per capita rate is nearly twice that of Nevada’s, and more than twice than of California’s.
“Yet not that long ago, gonorrhea rates were at historic lows, syphilis was close to elimination, and we were able to point to advances in STD prevention,” Dr. Gail Bolan, director of the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention, wrote in the new report’s foreword.
“That progress has since unraveled. The number of reported syphilis cases is climbing after being largely on the decline since 1941, and gonorrhea rates are now increasing.
Factors
Likely factors driving the recent rise in STD cases, which vary by location, include a surge in people getting tested (and thus more cases being diagnosed and reported).
“We have been very aggressive in making STD screening available in lots of different both clinical and community settings, particularly among young people, who have a disproportionate number,” he said.
The new report found that rates of reported cases tended to be highest among adolescents and young adults.
Monitoring
Four STDs are monitored nationwide and nationally notifiable to the CDC: chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and chancroid. Rates of all but chancroid have risen, and for each of those three STDs, rates in the District of Columbia were higher than in all states.
The new report, which analyzed STD data for the year 2018, found that a total of about 1.8 million cases of chlamydia infection were reported to the CDC last year, making it the most common notifiable condition in the United States.
Last year, rates of chlamydia cases by state ranged from 198.2 cases per 100,000 people in West Virginia to 832.5 cases per 100,000 people in Alaska, according to the new report. The rate for the District of Columbia was 1,298.9 cases per 100,000, the report found.
The report also found that a nationwide total of 583,405 cases of gonorrhea were reported to the CDC last year, making it the second most common notifiable condition in the United States.
Rates of reported gonorrhea climbed 82.6% since a historic low in 2009, the report found.
In 2018, rates of reported gonorrhea cases by states ranged from 43 cases per 100,000 people in Vermont to 326.7 per 100,000 in Mississippi, according to the report.
The gonorrhea rate in Washington, DC, was 611 cases per 100,000 people, the report found.
The report also found that 115,045 cases of syphilis nationwide were reported to the CDC last year. In 2018, states’ rates of reported primary and secondary syphilis cases ranged from 1.8 per 100,000 people in Vermont to 22.7 per 100,000 in Nevada. The rate of reported primary and secondary syphilis cases in DC was 40.2 cases per 100,000.
Some good news
Among other STDs included in the report, there has been overall declines in reported chancroid cases, in the prevalence of herpes simplex virus infections and in the prevalence of the human papillomavirus or HPV-related complications such as genital warts, which may be due to having access to a HPV vaccine.
The full report is available here
CDC / CNN
3 Responses
I guess VD is on the rise according to these results. What is going on in Washington DC that causes VD to get passed from person to person like water from a fucking faucet? Is Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Sarah Fuckabee-Sanders and Steven Mnuchin really fucking that many people and not getting treatment for VD ( 🙂 )?????
As for Michigan’s place on these lists, our insanely strict fornication ban isn’t “helping” much in the fight to stop VD. Since many married couples only fuck each other there must be a lot of fornication going on somewhere. Whether it is Michigan residents fornicating in Toledo and South Bend hotel rooms or car backseats where it is legal or if people are mainly fucking in their own homes with the blinds drawn I don’t know but maybe centrist Governor Whitmer and the insanely conservative state legislature need to grow a pair and repeal the fornication ban because it isn’t working, folks — unless you count filling prisons with fornicators as “working”.
Be careful out there Doctor Harris.
You, too, Hop. Don’t get VD from some first time performer on set. I know I won’t. 🙂