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Antibiotic-resistant cases of the sexually transmitted illness gonorrhea have more than quadrupled in the United States. This new data, from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, should serve as a warning that "the future of current treatment options may be in jeopardy," the agency said in a news release issued Thursday. "The confluence of emerging drug resistance and very limited alternative options for treatment creates a perfect storm for future gonorrhea treatment failure in the U.S.," said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, who directs the CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention.

Statewide total climbs to 246 confirmed Zika cases in Florida this year No cases of local transmission by mosquitoes, health department says First child born in Florida with Zika-related birth defect reported this week ====== Florida health officials confirmed the largest number of new Zika infections in a single day on Friday with 10 people affected, raising the statewide total to 246 cases this year, including 43 pregnant women. The new cases were announced on the same week that state officials reported Florida’s first baby born with a Zika-related birth defect. The baby is at least the fifth child born...

To win the fight against syphilis, we need to increase screening and detection among high-risk individuals from once a year to every three months. That's one of the recommendations announced today by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent volunteer panel of experts that provides input about the effectiveness of specific preventive care services. The report appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The increase in screenings should focus on the groups at highest risk -- HIV-positive men, men who have sex with men, and men ages 20 to 29 -- and safe sex practices, specifically the...

Sex roulette parties where one person is secretly HIV positive and nobody is allowed to use condoms are on the rise, warn doctors. The parties are usually attended by gay men, who are entertained by the 'thrill' of not knowing whether they will be infected or not. Spanish doctors have noted a rise in the sex roulette parties where attendees often take anti-viral drugs to reduce the risk of transmission.

Rates of gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted disease, are rising sharply in California, especially among gay and bisexual men, according to new state health data. The gonorrhea rate among California men aged 15 to 44 shot up 54 percent between 2011 and 2014, according to recently released data from the California Department of Public Health. Among women in the same age group, it rose 35 percent. An average of 34,000 gonorrhea cases among 15-to-44 year-olds was reported in California each year between 2012 and 2014, most of them among men. By contrast, the national gonorrhea rate, calculated slightly differently than California’s,...

The rate of syphilis infection among homosexual men has increased to a level not seen since the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, an official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Capitol Hill Wednesday. “We’re concerned about our high levels of syphilis among men who have sex with men — really we’re back to the level of disease — burden of disease — in gay men that we were seeing before HIV in this country,” said Gail Bolan, director of the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention. She was speaking at an event held...

If people manage to be proud of being perverts, it stands to reason that they can also be proud of the horrible diseases they contract through their perversion. That’s why Twitter is acrawl with the #ShoutYourStatus hashtag, in honor of April being STD Awareness Month: Seems to me that with the virally disproportionate spread of STDs among practitioners of sodomy, it would make more sense to “raise awareness” about the natural consequences of sexual promiscuity during June, which President Obama regularly dubs “LGBT Pride Month.” Nonetheless, and speaking of pride and promiscuity, you oughta head on over to Twitter and...

In his first year in office, President Obama lifted an entry ban on foreigners with HIV. In his final year in office he will lift the entry ban on three more sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The president's own Health and Human Services department says this guarantees more infections in the United States, proving once again that immigration is the defining issue for politicians like Obama. Increased immigration trumps all other concerns. First, some background. In 1993, a clause specifically designed to reduce the spread HIV/AIDS into the United States was added to the Immigration and Nationality Act. It passed the...

Half of gay and bisexual black men and a quarter of gay and bisexual Hispanic men will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetimes, the Centers for Disease Control announced in a first-of-its-kind study on Tuesday.

The administration has decided to let immigrants with three sexually transmitted diseases known for causing sores or lesions on genitalia to enter the United States, an expansion of a previous decision to let in those with HIV. The Department of Health and Human Services this month opened the borders to those with the STDs, deeming the communicable diseases not a big threat to the United States.

In June 1495, the Italian historian Niccolo Squillaci wrote a letter describing a horrific disease that was sweeping through Europe. “There are itching sensations, and an unpleasant pain in the joints; there is a rapidly increasing fever,” he wrote. “The skin is inflamed with revolting scabs and is completely covered with swellings and tubercules, which are initially of a livid red color, and then become blacker.” And, tellingly, “It most often begins with the private parts.”

Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart murdered by Italian composer and contemporary Antonio Salieri? Rumors have persisted since Mozart’s death in 1791. But the idea truly went global nearly 200 years later with the appearance of Peter Shaffer’s fictionalized account of the life and death of Mozart as seen through the eyes of his contemporary and competitor Salieri in Amadeus, first the Tony award-winning play in 1979, and the then the film of the same name by Milos Foreman which won an Oscar for Best Picture in 1985. Scholars have largely and uniformly debunked the theory, including Shaffer’s portrayal of Salieri as...

Alcohol Tax Hike in US 'Lowers Gonorrhea Rates' Tax hikes could help prevent sexually transmitted infections, scientists have claimed, after cases of gonorrhea fell 24% in Maryland since the introduction of alcohol price increases. According research by the University of Florida, since tax increases on alcohol largely decrease consumption, and less excessive drinking reduces 'risky' sexual behaviour, STI rates can be positively impacted by the measure. Researchers claim that in the 18 months after Maryland increased its alcohol taxes from 6% to 9%, there were 2,400 fewer statewide cases of gonorrhea. The team used data from the National Notifiable Disease...

It is now 34 years since the discovery and diagnosis of a peculiar and deadly disease afflicting homosexual men called acquired immune deficiency syndrome or AIDS. By now, knowledge of AIDS and of how the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is transmitted (via sex and the exchange of bodily fluids) is commonplace. And yet, RT reports, May 30, 2015, that the U.S. is seeing a sharp increase in sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among men who have sex with men, because of social media like Grindr.

The news in this year's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on sexually transmitted diseases is not good. The number of cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea in the United States increased between 2013 and 2014, after being on the decline for several years. Cases of syphilis, which have been on the rise for the last decade, shot up in 2014. Chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis are the three most common STDs in the United States that are also notifiable, meaning health departments are required to report new cases to the CDC. (HIV and shigella are also notifiable STDs.) Chlamydia is...

Charlie Sheen’s announcement that he is HIV positive has created a huge uproar as critics attack him from every direction, but the truth is that Charlie Sheen is simply a reflection of our society as a whole. You see, the truth is that it isn’t just big Hollywood stars that are engaged in insanely risky sexual behavior. According to the CDC, there are 110 million cases of sexually-transmitted disease in America today, and another 20 million STD cases are added to that total every year. The United States has the highest STD infection rate in the entire industrialized world, and...

Hundreds of thousands of people could unwittingly be carrying a newly-identified sexually transmitted infection, scientists warned today.New research has revealed that an infection called Mycoplasma genitalium (MG) - first identifed more than 30 years ago - is transferred through sexual contact.It is now estimated that one per cent of the British population aged 16-44 is infected

In 2012, AIDS activists in Los Angeles helped pass a law requiring condom use on all porn sets within county lines. In 2014, a federal court upheld the law, finding that the First Amendment doesn't excuse employers from basic health and safety regulations. Now the AIDS Healthcare Foundation has turned to the rest of California, trying to get the mandatory condom requirements on a statewide ballot. "Organizers said they collected 557,138 signatures from registered voters, more than the 365,880 they needed by Monday for the initiative to be on the ballot in November 2016," Reuters reports.

California lawmakers Thursday approved one of the toughest mandatory vaccination laws in the nation, legislation that would eliminate the option for parents to keep their children from being vaccinated based on religious or other personal beliefs. The measure, the most controversial taken up by the Legislature this year, would require all children who enter kindergarten in California to be vaccinated against diseases including measles and whooping cough unless a physician approves an exemption based on medical conditions such as allergies and immune system deficiencies. “As a mother, I understand the decisions we make about our children’s health care are deeply...

Two of the media’s favorite tropes met this week in an eye-catching story about the award-winning creative idea of three teens in England: condoms that change color when they detect a sexually transmitted infection. It’s the “whiz-kid-makes-scientific-discovery” tale plus sex. No wonder it’s trending on everything from BuzzFeed to the Washington Post. But we’ve seen before that the whiz kid narrative can be oversold (or, as I’ve chronicled before, incredibly convoluted), and that’s again the case here, at least so far as most media outlets are selling it.At first blush, the concept sounds pretty creative: find out instantly when it...