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The new and more dangerous strain of the mpox virus has been detected in Sweden, health authorities announced Thursday, marking the first time the pathogen has been found outside continental Africa. A person who sought clinical care in the Stockholm region was found to have mpox -- previously called monkeypox -- caused by the rapidly spreading variant known as Clade I, Sweden's Public Health Authority announced. The World Health Organization this week classified the spread of mpox Clade I in the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring countries as an international emergency and a threat to human health. It's the...

A daily dose of a widely used antibiotic can prevent some infections with syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia, potentially a new solution to the escalating crisis of sexually transmitted infections, scientists reported on Thursday. Their study was small and must be confirmed by more research. Scientists still have to resolve significant questions, including whether S.T.I.s might become resistant to the antibiotic and what effect it could have on healthy gut bacteria in people taking it every day. The approach would be recommended primarily to people at elevated risk of sexually transmitted infections during certain periods, said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, an infectious...

In new guidelines released Tuesday, U.S. health officials now recommend that certain people take the antibiotic doxycycline as a morning-after pill to lower the risk of some sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The latest recommendations only apply to gay and bisexual men and transgender women who have had an STD in the past year and are at high risk of getting infected again. While past research has shown that doxycycline works for those populations, there's not enough evidence to recommend the preventive treatment, known as doxy PEP, for all American adults, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted.

I met my patient, a 28-year-old cisgender male, while I was an attending on the Infectious Diseases consult service at an academic hospital. He told me that he had no significant medical history until about a week prior when he started having subtle changes in his vision. When he was admitted to the hospital, he was having sudden left-sided weakness that made him collapse at work. After I examined him, I found symptoms consistent with uveitis, an inflammation of the eye, as well as signs consistent with a stroke. His physical exam revealed a rash on his trunk that he...

Lesbian and bisexual women are dying much younger than their straight peers, according to a new study. During the survey, recently published in JAMA, Harvard researchers pulled from a previous study of women who worked as nurses and were born between 1945 and 1964, 90,833 of whom had disclosed their sexuality. Of those, 89,821 (98.9 percent) identified as heterosexual, 694 (0.8 percent) identified as lesbian, and 318 (0.4 percent) identified as bisexual. When compared with heterosexual participants, LGB participants showed earlier mortality. Bisexual women had the shortest life expectancy, dying 37 percent sooner than heterosexual women. Lesbian women died 20...

A mutant strain of monkeypox with 'pandemic potential' has been found in a town in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The virus is a descendent of the deadlier clade 1 mpox strain, but has evolved to become even more infectious and better at evading tests than its predecessor. The concerning discovery was made in Kamituga – a poor, densely populated gold mining town that is feared to be ripe for an explosive outbreak. So far there have been 108 cases. Researchers who detailed the virus in a pre-print have called for 'urgent measures' to contain the virus and avoid a...

As Sean finishes filling out the paperwork for today’s visit, he reads the date back to himself: 1/19. “Dolly Parton’s birthday, right?” he asks. He’s lying on a plastic-covered donor chair, clipboard balanced on his leg as he initials his consent. The phlebotomist who is preparing to take his blood pauses. “Oh, is it?” she asks. “I didn’t know that.” “Yeah, yeah. All gay men know that,” Sean laughs. He’s asked WPLN News to use only his first name. At 49, it’s Sean’s first time giving blood. Last year, the FDA ended a 40-year rule that prohibited gay and bisexual...

Cancer is the leading cause of death among people living with HIV, according to data in the annual American Cancer Society report Cancer Statistics, 2024, which was released January 17 and is also available in a consumer-friendly companion, Cancer Facts & Figures, 2024. … Less than 5% of cancers are attributed to infectious agents such as HIV, according to Cancer Facts & Figures. However, when compared with the general U.S. population, people living with HIV have a 10-fold higher burden of infection-related cancers.

A highly contagious infection that is spread through tiny particles of fecal matter has broken out in Portland - with officials warning that the homeless population are most at risk of catching the illness. Shigella is a bacteria that spreads through human feces. People transmit the infection after getting the microbes on their hands and then touching their mouths. People can also spread the intestinal infection through sexual intercourse. Multnomah County in Oregon has warned that homeless people and same-sex male partners are most at risk because of their lack of access to hygienic facilities. In the last month, 45...

Monkeypox is back, only this time it has a new variant that kills 10% of the people who get it. Currently, the disease is still in Africa, but that can change. For that reason, it’s time (again) that we talk about the problem of promiscuity among gay men, since they were monkeypox’s primary vector in 2022. One of the biggest topics in the 1980s was AIDS, a sexually transmitted disease killing gay men. It got them because of their lifestyle choices. Back in 1981, while I was in college, I worked as a secretary for two virologists who were on...

A syphilis epidemic has broken out in the US and clinics say its a struggle to get antibiotics. The antibiotic treatment for the sexually transmitted disease is running low across the United States while the number of infections has risen to high levels. This has prompted dozens of public health groups to ask the White House to intervene.

As rates of sexually transmitted infections continue to skyrocket across the United States, a growing number of physicians are prescribing a commonly used antibiotic as a way to prevent chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis infections in gay and bisexual men and transgender women. Doxycycline is a class of medications traditionally used to treat bacterial STIs after someone has been infected. Yet recent research suggests that one 200mg dose of the drug can be effective in preventing such infections among men who have sex with men if taken within 72 hours after unprotected sex.

America is in the midst of an explosion of sexually transmitted diseases as these maps compiled by DailyMail.com using official data show. Using the most up-to-date Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, they show how every state has seen a spike in cases of syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease that can lead to organ damage, and gonorrhea, an STD that can cause infertility, between 2017 and 2021. Only chlamydia, the most common STD in the US, appeared to have infection rates plateau - but the suspicion is that fewer tests are being done. Overall, infection rates of syphilis...

Part of the reason cases of syphilis — as well as other STIs — are rising is because public health efforts to control these diseases are underfunded.

<p>N. Adam Brown, MD, MBA, is an emergency medicine physician and business expert. This past weekend, I stood with my husband looking up into the sky. People packed the pier on the Wharf in Washington, D.C., as a rainbow of fireworks sparkled in the warm, June sky. Music played. People laughed and danced. "Pride" was in full swing, and I was proud.</p>

Search... Remember monkeypox? Given how quickly the panic involving the transmissible disease came and went, you may not, but back in 2022, the panic got so bad that California declared a state of emergency. Further, the White House decided to appoint a monkeypox czar. He’s a controversial figure, to say the least. Demetre Daskalakis is his name, and he has a checkered history, having served as Deputy Commissioner of New York’s Division of Disease Control. Apparently, he did so a great job formulating one of the worst COVID responses in the country that he earned a job in the White...

Mpox cases recently showed a small spike in the Chicago area. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there was a total of 12 confirmed and one probable case of mpox reported to the Chicago Department of Public Health between April 17 to May 5. All cases were among symptomatic men and none were hospitalized. Nine (69 percent) of 13 cases were among men who had received two JYNNEOS vaccine doses. The new case rate was the highest in Chicago since November 2022 and the highest weekly rate in any U.S. region so far this year.

Does anyone doubt this? Even queer sources are sounding the increased warnings of a resurgent spike in monkeypox cases in the next several months, including in VAXXED homos. Has Monkeypox learned and now become drug resistant? We can only hope.

HIV may lie dormant in a distinct viral reservoir in the central nervous system (CNS), or brain and spinal cord, which could present an additional barrier to a cure, according to a recent report in Nature Microbiology. “Our analysis of rebound virus suggests latently infected T cells in the CNS are separate from the latent reservoir in the blood,” senior stud author Ron Swanstrom, PhD, of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine said in a press release. “Our analysis allows us to infer the presence of a distinct pool of latently infected cells in the CNS waiting to...

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a health advisory to warn the public of an increase of a drug-resistant bacteria called Shigella. There are limited antimicrobial treatments available for these particular drug-resistant strains of Shigella and it’s also easily transmissible, warned the CDC in the Friday advisory. It’s also able to spread antimicrobial resistance genes to other bacteria that infect the intestines. Shigella infections known as shigellosis can cause a fever, abdominal cramping, tenesmus and diarrhea that is bloody. The bacteria can be spread by a fecal-oral route, person-to-person contact, and contaminated food and water. While...