Midwest Freelancer archive article
Crouching Coed, Hidden Syphilis
(Published Saturday, March 25, 2006)
By Chris Post/Midwest Freelancer
Sure she’s cute, with her belly shirt and low rise jeans exposing just a hint of thong. But is that potential hook up clean?
Since 1999, our friends at the Centers for Disease Control have been working overtime to make syphilis a thing of the past. While they have been somewhat successful, the STD is making a comeback.
A CDC report released earlier this month shows that by 2000 the number of reported syphilis cases had fallen to the lowest point since records began being kept in 1941.
However, the number of new primary and secondary cases of syphilis has increased every year since, reaching 7,980 in 2004, and men are seeing the greatest increase in infection.
Between 2003 and 2004 the rate of syphilis infection increased 11.9 percent among men. While women as a group suffer syphilis infections at a rate lower than men, the CDC found a higher rate of infection among women in the 20-24 year-old age group.
“Syphilis increases demonstrate the need to continually adapt our strategies to eliminate syphilis in the United States,” said Dr. Ronald O. Valdiserri, deputy director of CDC’s HIV, STD and TB prevention programs. “While there is no silver bullet to reduce syphilis rates, innovative screening and prevention programs around the country are having a positive impact in many areas and providing crucial lessons that will help us meet new challenges.”
The CDC’s study found that the cities with the highest rates of syphilis among men were San Francisco, Atlanta and Boston. For women the highest concentration of infection occurred in Baltimore, followed by Detroit. Jacksonville, New Orleans and Newark had the dubious distinction of tying as the third most infected cities.
Down with the Sickness
What makes syphilis so insidious is its abilities to hide in a host. That cutie dancing in the club may seem perfectly healthy, but she could running rampant with treponema pallidum, the bacteria that causes syphilis.
The good news is the bacteria can’t live outside a host. So you can’t pick them up from eating utensils or through using tubs, pools or toilets. However, unprotected sex can expose your skin or membranes to the bacteria. In as few as nine or as many as 90 day after you are infected, you will develop a a small, round, firm sore. Often painless — and sometimes even located inside your body — the sore, called a chancre, can be easy to miss. Making syphilis even more evil is the fact that the chancre will clear up all by itself in a few weeks. Even if you don’t get treatment, you’ll look fine and feel fine.
But within weeks, you will enter the secondary stage of syphilis. This stage is marked by an itchy rash that usually appears on the palms of your hands and soles of your feet. Wherever they are, the rash lesions produces syphilis bacteria — making you a risk of infection to others.
Once again, the symptoms will pass and you might be fooled into thinking you’re okay. Nothing could be further from the truth. Without treatment, the disease goes into what is referred to as a latent phase. Even though you have no symptoms, it is possible to infect others with the disease.
Not following through with treatment also puts you at risk for Tertiary, or late stage, syphilis. As if genital sores and seeping lesions weren’t bad enough, the bacteria now begin to damage your heart, eyes, brain, nervous system, bones and joints. An incredibly slow process, this damage can happen years or even decades after that one night stand. At its most extreme, syphilis can cause mental illness, blindness, deafness, neurological problems, heart disease and death.
What’s Up, Doc?
If you think you might be infected, this is not the time to tough it out or go the do-it-yourself route. Make an appointment to see your doctor immediately as syphilis is easiest to diagnose and treat when you still have physical symptoms.
Just this week, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning against using at-home test kits widely available through the Internet. No home-use test kits intended for diagnosing syphilis have been approved for sale in the U.S.
The treatment has remained the same for nearly 50 years — a shot of penicillin will usually do the trick. If you’re allergic, multiple doses of an alternate antibiotic will likely be used. It should almost go without saying, but you should abstain from sex during the treatment and recovery process. It’s also a good idea to notify your sex partners so they can be tested.
And remember that unlike the chicken pox, getting syphilis once doesn’t make you immune to future infections.
So Wrap that Rascal
Because most people become infected from people with no outward signs of the disease, the best way to prevent infection is to keep that rocket in your pocket. Barring that, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recommends having mutually monogamous sex with only one uninfected partner. In addition, using condoms properly and consistently reduces your risk of infection.
By Chris Post/Midwest Freelancer
Sure she’s cute, with her belly shirt and low rise jeans exposing just a hint of thong. But is that potential hook up clean?
Since 1999, our friends at the Centers for Disease Control have been working overtime to make syphilis a thing of the past. While they have been somewhat successful, the STD is making a comeback.
A CDC report released earlier this month shows that by 2000 the number of reported syphilis cases had fallen to the lowest point since records began being kept in 1941.
However, the number of new primary and secondary cases of syphilis has increased every year since, reaching 7,980 in 2004, and men are seeing the greatest increase in infection.
Between 2003 and 2004 the rate of syphilis infection increased 11.9 percent among men. While women as a group suffer syphilis infections at a rate lower than men, the CDC found a higher rate of infection among women in the 20-24 year-old age group.
“Syphilis increases demonstrate the need to continually adapt our strategies to eliminate syphilis in the United States,” said Dr. Ronald O. Valdiserri, deputy director of CDC’s HIV, STD and TB prevention programs. “While there is no silver bullet to reduce syphilis rates, innovative screening and prevention programs around the country are having a positive impact in many areas and providing crucial lessons that will help us meet new challenges.”
The CDC’s study found that the cities with the highest rates of syphilis among men were San Francisco, Atlanta and Boston. For women the highest concentration of infection occurred in Baltimore, followed by Detroit. Jacksonville, New Orleans and Newark had the dubious distinction of tying as the third most infected cities.
Down with the Sickness
What makes syphilis so insidious is its abilities to hide in a host. That cutie dancing in the club may seem perfectly healthy, but she could running rampant with treponema pallidum, the bacteria that causes syphilis.
The good news is the bacteria can’t live outside a host. So you can’t pick them up from eating utensils or through using tubs, pools or toilets. However, unprotected sex can expose your skin or membranes to the bacteria. In as few as nine or as many as 90 day after you are infected, you will develop a a small, round, firm sore. Often painless — and sometimes even located inside your body — the sore, called a chancre, can be easy to miss. Making syphilis even more evil is the fact that the chancre will clear up all by itself in a few weeks. Even if you don’t get treatment, you’ll look fine and feel fine.
But within weeks, you will enter the secondary stage of syphilis. This stage is marked by an itchy rash that usually appears on the palms of your hands and soles of your feet. Wherever they are, the rash lesions produces syphilis bacteria — making you a risk of infection to others.
Once again, the symptoms will pass and you might be fooled into thinking you’re okay. Nothing could be further from the truth. Without treatment, the disease goes into what is referred to as a latent phase. Even though you have no symptoms, it is possible to infect others with the disease.
Not following through with treatment also puts you at risk for Tertiary, or late stage, syphilis. As if genital sores and seeping lesions weren’t bad enough, the bacteria now begin to damage your heart, eyes, brain, nervous system, bones and joints. An incredibly slow process, this damage can happen years or even decades after that one night stand. At its most extreme, syphilis can cause mental illness, blindness, deafness, neurological problems, heart disease and death.
What’s Up, Doc?
If you think you might be infected, this is not the time to tough it out or go the do-it-yourself route. Make an appointment to see your doctor immediately as syphilis is easiest to diagnose and treat when you still have physical symptoms.
Just this week, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning against using at-home test kits widely available through the Internet. No home-use test kits intended for diagnosing syphilis have been approved for sale in the U.S.
The treatment has remained the same for nearly 50 years — a shot of penicillin will usually do the trick. If you’re allergic, multiple doses of an alternate antibiotic will likely be used. It should almost go without saying, but you should abstain from sex during the treatment and recovery process. It’s also a good idea to notify your sex partners so they can be tested.
And remember that unlike the chicken pox, getting syphilis once doesn’t make you immune to future infections.
So Wrap that Rascal
Because most people become infected from people with no outward signs of the disease, the best way to prevent infection is to keep that rocket in your pocket. Barring that, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recommends having mutually monogamous sex with only one uninfected partner. In addition, using condoms properly and consistently reduces your risk of infection.