Increase in the number of infected with the infectious disease that many thought had disappeared: What is the reason?
While health systems around the world were focused on the coronavirus, numerous diseases fell into the background, because people did not go for preventive and scheduled examinations.
The consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the measures related to it, can be felt for years. Health workers in САД recently warned about such a problem, which, partly due to the pandemic, is little talked about.
It's about syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease caused by the bacterium pale treponema, whose number in the United States is the highest in the last 30 years. According to the preliminary data of Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of people infected with syphilis last year increased by as much as 27 percent, to more than 171.000. Congenital syphilis, which affects infants born to infected mothers, is also on the rise, and about 2.700 such cases have been recorded, while in 2012 there were 334 in the United States. This form of syphilis can have dire consequences - from stillbirth to deformity. on the bones, jaundice, blindness and deafness of newborns, he writes Zimo.dnevnik.hr.
One of the problems with this disease, which many think has been eradicated, is that syphilis can mimic other infections, so some people don't even know they're infected. The first symptoms of the disease appear about 3 weeks after sexual contact with infected persons and include concave sunken sores on the genitals or in the mouth. These sores can last 3 to 6 weeks and disappear even without treatment, but even weeks after they start to disappear, people are still infected.
Then follows the second phase, which includes a rash on the arms and legs, and the symptoms can be high fever, swollen lymph glands, sore throat, headache, fatigue, etc., and if the therapy is still not applied, the third phase can occur. At this stage, people are no longer contagious, but they are still at high risk and can develop weeks or even years after infection. This can result in organ damage, heart problems, vision and hearing loss, and the worst outcome – death.
As for treatment, it is usually treated with one or more injections of penicillin or, for those allergic to it, another type of antibiotic. There is no vaccine against syphilis, although it is being researched.
Why is there an increase? The reason for such, we can call them alarming numbers, lies in several factors. The experts who spoke to the journalists of The Washington Post, above all, warn about the lower use of condoms, but also about the increase in the use of opioids and methamphetamine, the use of which is associated with risky sexual behavior. Also, while early in the century there were campaigns aimed at eradicating syphilis, over time government funding dried up and many clinics in cities across the United States closed their doors.
It got out of control. It's horrible. We have a big problem, he commented Matthew Golden, professor in The Center for AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases on University of Washington, the current situation with a large increase in sexually transmitted diseases in the United States.
