ATLANTA, April 26 (UPI) -- The rate of syphilis has risen sharply among U.S. homosexual and bisexual men, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
The agency said the overall syphilis rate rose 19 percent between 2000 and 2003, and this increase was exclusively in men.
Although the gender of infected people's sexual partners was not specified in the statistics, the incidence of syphilis in women dropped another 53 percent during this time period, while the incidence in men rose by 62 percent. That led the CDC concluded that homosexual and bisexual men are the principal population group represented.
By comparison, the incidence of syphilis in the United States between 1990 and 2003 plummeted by 90 percent. Public health officials attribute this to a nationwide prevention campaign aimed at heterosexuals.
CDC said the recent upswing in rates of the disease from 2000 to 2003 might be caused by increasing illicit drug use, "safe-sex fatigue," and prevention messages getting drowned out by the buzz about new medications keeping AIDS patients alive.
"We've fallen behind in our prevention efforts," said Kahlil Ghanem of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "We have to get back on track with prevention messages if we want to curb this outbreak."
Officials noted that, while syphilis can be easily cured with antibiotics, it can cause dementia and death if left untreated.
The research is published in this week's online edition of The American Journal of Public Health.
