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Growing resistance to antibiotics has complicated efforts to rein in common sexually transmitted diseases like gonorrhoea, chlamydia and syphilis, the World Health Organization warned Tuesday as it issued new treatment guidelines. Globally, more than one million people contract a sexually transmitted disease (STD) or infection (STI) every day, WHO said. "Chlamydia, gonorrhoea and syphilis are major public health problems worldwide, affecting millions of peoples' quality of life, causing serious illness and sometimes death," Ian Askew, head of WHO's reproductive health and research division, said in a statement.

As the old saying goes, “Laughter is the best medicine. Unless you have syphilis in which case penicillin is the best choice”. The disease, caused by the bacterium Treponema Pallidum and passed on through unprotected oral, vaginal and anal sex, has affected the famous through the ages (Al Capone and, reportedly, Hitler, to name just two). But syphilis is in no way confined to big names, nor is it a sexually transmitted infection (STI) of the past. The 2016 Public Health England (PHE) syphilis report has shown that infection rates are on the up, with disproportionate rates in London. In...

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...

Bill Clinton’s battle with a tragic brain disease is sparking fears he won’t live to see the November elections! “Bill is clearly not the same person he was a year ago, or even six months ago,” a political spy told The National ENQUIRER. "He is much slower physically, and he suffers periodic mental lapses.”

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...

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.”

Perhaps Americans should be more worried about the seemingly frail and sickly Bill and Hillary Clinton, and less so about their 74-year-old rival Bernie Sanders. During an appearance in Fairfield, Iowa Friday, KTVO reports Clinton was much more direct today in attacking his wife’s chief opponent in the race, Bernie Sanders, than at a Thursday rally. Who will do the most to make you a part of the future that the president painted in the State of the Union, Clinton said, his voice quivering. “How are we going to do it and who’s the best change maker to do it?...

Bill Clinton came to the vote-rich city of Mason City on Wednesday night and recounted his wife's life experiences, recited her policy ideas, and ripped into the Republicans a bit. But what Mr. Clinton used to do so well -- and what Hillary Clinton needs, only days before the Iowa caucuses on Monday -- was nowhere to be found: a polished, piercing critique of an opponent, in this case Bernie Sanders. At an event in Las Vegas last week, Mr. Clinton, 69, looked smaller and his voice seemed weaker than in past campaigns, and people had to strain to hear...

While campaigning in Iowa Saturday to rescue Hillary's floundering presidential campaign, the former president's hand could be seen trembling while he was making a point. As he was explaining his wife's rationale for invoking 9/11 to defend her ties to Wall Street, Clinton said, "She was making the point that the people devastated on 9/11 were people to her, not categories."

“In the yere of Chryst 1493 or there aboute this most foule and most grievous disease beganne to sprede amonge the people,” a German scholar named Ulrich von Hutten wrote soon after the first known outbreak of syphilis swept across Europe. In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, the historian Jared Diamond elaborated: “Its pustules often covered the body from the head to the knees, caused flesh to fall off people’s faces, and led to death within a few months.” Today, syphilis can seem like a historical relic, more likely to appear in period movies than in one’s next-door neighbor....

In 1495, a "new" disease spread throughout Europe: syphilis. Christopher Columbus was said to have brought this sexually transmitted disease back from his voyage to America. At least, that has been the accepted theory up until now. Using morphological and structural evidence, researchers from the Department of Forensic Medicine and the Center for Anatomy and Cell Biology (bone laboratory) at MedUni Vienna have now identified several cases of congenital syphilis dating back to as early as 1320 AD in skeletons from excavations at the cathedral square of St. Polten, Austria... Congenital syphilis, which is passed from a pregnant mother to...

Howard was crafty as he handed Megyn three fellow Fox personalities: Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn Beck. Megyn's answers? The "F" goes to Bill O'Reilly. She'd marry Hannity, and kill Glenn Beck. By way of explanation, Megyn said Hannity's "got the most dough and he's the youngest, right?" and that O'Reilly "wrote a book that had some saucy sex scenes."

In a disturbing piece published in NY Mag, Michael Sonmore said that he's okay with his wife having sex with random men because he's a feminist. The article is titled, "What Open Marriage Taught One Man About Feminism" and details Sonmore's "open" relationship with his wife. It begins with this paragraph (emphasis mine): "As I write this, my children are asleep in their room, Loretta Lynn is on the stereo, and my wife is out on a date with a man named Paulo. It’s her second date this week; her fourth this month so far. If it goes like the...

(From Video Transcript:) The World Health Organization says Cuba has reached one of the greatest public health milestones possible. It has ended the mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. At a news conference in Havana, WHO representative Jose Luis di Fabio praised Cuba’s health system. […] UNICEF Representative Anna Lucia d’Emilio says Cuba’s achievement shows that ending the AIDS epidemic is possible. …

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official cited an “epidemic” of syphilis among homosexual men during an event Thursday by a lobbying group pushing for an increase in federal funding for sexually transmitted disease prevention from $157 million to $212 million. “We’re also seeing what we are calling pretty much an epidemic of syphilis among men who have sex with men – that really started in the early – 2000, 2002, but we’ve seen a dramatic increase since 2008,” Dr. Gail Bolan, director of CDC’s Division of STD Prevention, said at a briefing by the National Coalition of STD...

At the end of 2014 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its sexually transmitted disease surveillance data for the previous year, 2013, showing the rates for primary and secondary syphilis, which is the most infectious stage of syphilis, increased by an alarming 10 percent. “This second year of double-digit increases of syphilis rates is completely unacceptable and also significantly intersects with our HIV epidemic,” says William Smith, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors. “This continues to affect populations already disproportionately impacted by all STDs, including HIV, most notably gay men and other men who have...

Recent research indicates there is growing concern about the dramatic rise in the number of syphilis victims among the gay men community in the United States. It has been reported that syphilis is spreading rapidly among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men.

Despite near-total elimination of the sexually transmitted venereal disease syphilis more than a decade ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that rates have made a steep jump over the last eight years.The new study released Thursday offers a snapshot of the disease’s prevalence across multiple demographics, including gender, race, sexual orientation, age, and geographic region. Where syphilis was once on the brink of eradication in the year 2000, when the rate was a mere 2.1 cases per 100,000, overall prevalence had increased to 5.3 cases per 100,000 people by 2013. Researchers working with the CDC speculate...

The National Institutes of Health has spent millions of dollars studying male sex workers in Peru, including more than $400,000 to determine why gay men get syphilis in the South American country. “Syphilis remains an uncontrolled infectious disease globally, with high prevalence and incidence in certain high risk populations, affecting more than 20 percent of men who have sex with men (MSM) in Peru,” according to the grant, awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “The incidence of syphilis in MSM in Peru is about 9 cases per 100 person-years,” it said. “We are proposing a study to improve...

On Jan. 8, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that gonorrhea and syphilis are on the rise in the United States – “mostly in men who have sex with men.” In 2012, the rate of new gonorrhea cases rose by 4 percent. The rate of new cases of syphilis jumped 11 percent. Bloomberg quoted Gail Bolan, director of the CDC’s Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention Division, who declared: “Many people don’t get tested as recommended. That’s especially the case for syphilis – where the rise is entirely attributable to men – particularly those who are gay or bisexual.” And...