4 Results
Emergency Department Screening More Than Doubles Detection of Syphilis Cases
September 10, 2024
Providing optional syphilis tests to most people seeking care at a large emergency department led to a dramatic increase in syphilis screening and diagnosis, according to study of nearly 300,000 emergency department encounters in Chicago. Most people diagnosed had no symptoms, which suggests that symptom-based testing strategies alone could miss opportunities to diagnose and treat people with syphilis.
NIH Awards Will Support Innovation in Syphilis Diagnostics
September 3, 2024
NIAID has awarded grants for 10 projects to improve diagnostic tools for congenital and adult syphilis—conditions currently diagnosed with a sequence of tests, each with limited precision. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that adult and congenital syphilis cases increased by 80% and 183% respectively between 2018 and 2022—a crisis that prompted the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish a national taskforce to respond to the epidemic.
Biomedical STI Prevention Evidence Is Inadequate for Cisgender Women
December 20, 2023
Pivotal studies of some biomedical HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevention interventions have excluded cisgender women or demonstrated low efficacy among them, limiting their prevention options relative to other populations who experience high HIV and STI incidence. Findings show doxycycline postexposure prophylaxis (better known as DoxyPEP) did not prevent STI acquisition in cisgender women, despite showing promising results in gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men and transgender women in a previous study.
NIH-Funded Study Finds Doxycycline Reduces Sexually Transmitted Infections by Two-Thirds
April 6, 2023
The oral antibiotic doxycycline prevented the acquisition of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) when tested among study participants who took the medication within 72 hours of having condomless sex. The post-exposure approach, termed doxy-PEP, resulted in a two-thirds reduction in the incidence of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia among the study participants.
