Health: US STD Rates Hit All Time High
Leaps and bounds may have been made in the fight against HIV, but that doesn’t mean you get to be less careful about other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) when you go out and play. As a new report from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) makes clear, playing safely is still the best way to go.
At the National STD Prevention Conference, the CDC revealed that nearly 2.3 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis were diagnosed in the United States in 2017. This is an increase of 200,000 cases from the previous record set in 2016, and is the fourth consecutive year of sharp increases in these STDs.
The numbers, broken down for each disease, are as follows:
• Gonorrhea diagnoses increased 67 percent overall (from 333,004 to 555,608 cases according to preliminary 2017 data) and nearly doubled among men (from 169,130 to 322,169). Increases in diagnoses among women — and the speed with which they are increasing — are also concerning, with cases going up for the third year in a row (from 197,499 to 232,587).
• Primary and secondary syphilis diagnoses increased 76 percent (from 17,375 to 30,644 cases). Gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (MSM) made up almost 70 percent of primary and secondary syphilis cases where the gender of the sex partner is known in 2017. Primary and secondary syphilis are the most infectious stages of the disease.
• Chlamydia remained the most common condition reported to CDC. More than 1.7 million cases were diagnosed in 2017, with 45 percent among 15- to 24-year-old females.
“We are sliding backward,” said Jonathan Mermin, M.D., M.P.H, director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention. “It is evident the systems that identify, treat, and ultimately prevent STDs are strained to near-breaking point.”
The CDC is calling on health care providers to be even more vigilant in making STD screening and timely treatment a standard part of medical care, saying it is an important component in reversing current trends.
For testing places near you, please visit GetTested.CDC.GOV, and lets all work together at keeping our community safe!
More people doing it raw cause there on prep?
Yes, exactly.
I was going to say the same exact thing. Health workers when assessing peoples sexual history suggest and prescribe to the patients that involve themselves in risky behavior as a preventative for hiv which I have no problem with. I often wonder though if it’s stressed enough and made crystal clear that it ISN’T going to keep them from getting an std.
I cringe when I see “on prep” or something along those lines in people’s profiles on apps or even here on Adam in conjunction with their preference for bare sex. Even more so when they always have “looking” as their current status. I admit seeing a guy is on prep throws up a red flag for me. You can judge me as you will but what was presented in the article has been the main reason for my overall feelings on having sex with someone who is on it.
Basically I think being on prep has given a lot of guys the idiotic idea that they can have unprotective sex whenever and with whoever they choose. Not everyone is totally read up on on prep and I think those people are being misled by guys telling them “Hey it’s ok you don’t have to worry I’m clean because I’m on prep.”
It’s not to say guys not on prep haven’t become more complacent in their sexual practices as well but overall I think that it’s the carelessness of those on the drug that is a major factor in the sharp increase of stds we are seeing.
Now CDC & FDA will “find something wrong” with PrEP. Ppl are leaving condoms behind and will risk the above diseases that are generally easy to fix.
This articlee was embarrassingly short, it didnt mention that all the common STDs are becoming increasingly resistant to usual treatments. Not that long ago, if you got a STD, you were placed into a home quarantined, forced to live the rest for the rest of your life socially and sexually cut off. Considering the lack of progress in new meds to fight off these STDs and the attitude of our millenial generation so focused on self gratification I would not be surprised to see in less than 10 years a return to being physically isolated.
Despite all our concerted efforts for sexual freedoms, despite the combined efforts of conservative groups and religious extremist to return us back to the values of the 1950s, apparently nature’s ability to evolve, mutate and resist our antibiotics will win out.
These can all pass from oral sex, so unless you want to use condoms for blowjobs…
YES ERIC, you’ve said THAT before, and you SHOULD be using everything within your capability to protect yourself from STDs. Also, getting a steady partner and regular check ups might create the opportunity to have oral sex without condoms, wouldn’t that be nice too!
Blame it all on bareback porn. It sets a bad example. Take note, members, and porn producers and “stars.” Bareback and raw is not cool.
Luigi, I love bareback porn but I don’t bareback with anyone I meet online,I know better. Don’t blame porn, it’s the ignorant men that don’t realize the risk of STDs from unprotected oral or and unprotected sex that are on prep. Those men are cum dumster slut pigs with no morals!
Lugi, you’re a f-ing idiot!
This omits hpv, candida, parasites, herpes, and a number of other stds.
. . . Yawn, not to sound smug, you know I’m not surprised, though, way too many are just ‘not’ learning anything, like I said before, all this freedom, and can’t handle it, so it goes away in more ways than one. The smugness, is with those whom, think, they know what they’re doing or just don’t give a damn; sexual addictions to boot. It just really hurts us all, too.
This is 100% from the invention of PREP. I see so many people who say in third profile “On PREP so bareback only” or “I’m PREPared so no condoms”. To pretend PREP is not the direct cause of this hike would litterally be delusional. I have seen with my own eyes the amount of people who are having unprotected sex now because of PREP.
If the AIDS epidemic didn’t compel universal condom usage, treatable non-fatal infections won’t either. We’re gonna have to evolved and diversify prevention strategies eventually.
Doctors encouraging routine testing and treatment, and the medical community (as well as governments) investing in finding new ways to treat these infections will need to be the way to go. Of course the same treatments from decades ago weren’t gonna hold up forever. As bacteria evolves, medicine has to evolve with it.
We’ve been talking about the concept of antibiotic resistance long enough that development of new treatments should be a thing.
I also hate how this conversation is limited to STI’s, as if the only bacterial infections with these kinds of problems are sexually transmitted.
This isn’t to say that condoms can’t be encouraged as a tool for prevention, but ultimately, people are gonna fuck how they want to. So, now what?
I have to chime in on this too. As an AVID condom user that is also on prep, I am amazed at how many people use prep as a substitute for a condom.
I even chatted with a guy on here that is an RN that is on prep and BB’s. He got so passionate about it saying that even STDs can be transmitted with a condom. Though I wont disagree, I certainly do not condone no condom.
Most guys that do not want to use condoms complain that it messes with their erection. Well… in my humble opinion, the prescription for that is VIAGRA – NOT BAREBACKING.
It cracks me up when guys want to fuck raw but they dont want to kiss. As if raw is going to make the sexual encounter hotter. The only thing that makes sex hotter is chemistry mixed with good sexual skills.
I know I got on my soap box, however, I am amazed at how many BB enthusiasts are in Los Angeles. Seriously, for a 1 time encounter?? Really??
Personally, I got on prep so I can date a poz man comfortable and have a “backup” should a condom break. I have thought of getting off it due to the undetectable rise etc.. Yet. so many guys are undetectable and they smoke/ drink/drug. The reciepe of drugs + bb = disaster. After all, how good can an immune system be on drugs. How cognizant is the mind when altered?
So sure, std’s will increase as long as risky behavior takes place. Im not in the mood for feeling my dick is on fire and about to fall off for a trick I probably will never see or hookup with again.
and its easier to hookup anywhere u go with apps like Grindr, tinder, scruff etc…kinda scary
The law of unintended consequences…so PrEp has created a recurrent/new set of problems. Syphilis in Los Angeles County has gone nutso wild. The number of guys on A4A, Grindr, etc. who say to me, “I wanna nut in your ass,” has increased radically, whereas even 2 years ago they would not have said that or considered sex without a condom. The answer is, “Nah, I’m good thanks.” One thing that really helps is to regularly go to an STI/HIV/APLA clinic. It has the effect of not wanting to embarrass yourself with the discovery that you have syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia while you’re on PrEp!
same for me, everybody wants to fuck me bareback….
I don’t though, coz for me nut or no nut, I don’t care.
Keep those borders Open! Shocker!
Well….I won’t tell you how much I have been lambasted by “sex positive” people on various websites whenever I mention ludicrous behavior I’ve seen at cruising venues. The Squirt website users are notoriously hateful against ANY mention of caution against their debaucherous habits and will try to have you banned. I don’t know, but I think a lot of the “rise” in STI rates is because of this very behavior…not so much what is going on with one-on-one encounters had from various apps…but the bookstores and dirty movie theaters and the few outdoor cruising venues that still exist. Many married men…and gay men with partners….would rather sneak out to these type places rather than spend a lot of time going back and forth with someone on an app for a hookup. And yes, they are sucking dick…eating azz…and fuckin’ without protection. At least about 80% of the guys I have seen in these places are not using condoms. I can’t tell you the amount of money I have wasted trying to get some action but leaving with blue balls because I refuse to play the way they want to play. I have often wanted to know what the percentage is in the rise of clinic visits after a weekend at one of these locations. It is unbelievable some of the stuff I’ve seen…in this day and age.
Also, those self-absorbed Millennials who are hawking PREP at gay “gatherings” where the drug is being introduced and discussed, glamorize and talk about it like it’s some nirvana pill. I heard one guy glowing about it saying “Ohhhh it has allowed me to have the type of sex I WANTTT to have!!!” which of course is BB and unbridled.
Self destructive, its what way too many gay men are, I mean, we’re not procreating, its just fornication . . . and then, for the rest of your life, possibly… I just can’t imagine it is all. So many ways to “nut” or have “fun,” or whatever, yet, they’d rather put themselves, each other, in harms way.
IT’s ALL BECAUSE OF PREP and EVERONES SLUTTY DESIRES TO BAREBACK WHICH DOCTORS NEED TO BE TESTING THEIR PATIENTS ON A MORE FREQUENT BASIS AS A REQUIREMENT TO KEEP GETTING PREP AS A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE AND THEY ALSO NEED TO BE MORE VERBAL IN TELLING THER PATIENTS THAT IT DOESNT PREVENT EVERYTHING AND SOMETIMES THEIR ARE NOO SIGNS OF SYPHILIS SO THAT PROBABLY THE ONE I THINK IS DEF AT THE TOP OF THE LIST