New York – Sexually transmitted disease rates for American adults dropped last year, but syphilis in newborns continued to increase, according to new government data published on Wednesday.
Provisional data for centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2024 showed a third consecutive year of fewer cases of Gonorrhea, and the second consecutive year of fewer adult cases of Chlamydia and the most infectious forms of syphilis.
But the cases of congenital syphilis, in which infected mothers transmit the disease to their babies, do not see the same improvements. Such infections in infants can lead to deaths or health problems such as deafness, blindness and malformed bones.
The number and rate of newborns have increased since 2012, when around 300 have been reported and last year increased to almost 4,000. The increases of 2024 were not as high as the other years – cases increased by less than 2% compared to 2023. But health experts say that no cases should occur, and all growth is worrying.
“The continuous increase in congenital syphilis is a painful indication that we are not doing enough to protect women and pregnant newborns,” said Elizabeth Finley, acting executive director of the National Coalition of MST directors, in a press release.
About 1.5 million cases of chlamydia, 543,000 from Gonorrhea and more than 190,000 syphilis were diagnosed and reported last year. Each was less than the previous year, and more than 2.2 million cases in total represented a drop of 9% compared to 2023.
The overall decreases in sexually transmitted diseases in recent years have a lot to do with a general drop in young people with new partners, said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, researcher of infectious diseases at the University of South California.
But the drop in cases of adult syphilis is generally attributed to the growing use of antibiotic doxycycline as a pill after morning, especially for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had a MST diagnosis. The cases of primary and secondary syphilis, the most infectious stages of the disease, dropped by 22% last year, according to the CDC.
The new data suggests that the improvement of certain groups has not yet played in the obstetrics. There are several possible factors, but only 80% of pregnant women could be detected for syphilis, according to a recent CDC study.
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