Syphilis amongst homosexual men in Quebec is on the rise
Syphilis cases amongst homosexual men in Quebec are
increasing at a great rate, but Quebec is not the only place in the world where
that happens. Therefore a recent warning by the FDA comes at a bad time.
Winnipeg Sun, Canada - 7 Feb 2005
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2005/02/07/923357-cp.htmlU.S. FDA issues Globus warning
By LES PERREAUX
QUEBEC (CP) - A Canadian company's promise of
easy home tests for HIV and syphilis cannot be trusted, the United States
Food and Drug Administration warned Monday....
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CTV, Canada - 8 Feb 2005
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1107867485128_3/?hub=Health
FDA issues warning on Quebec medical tests
Canadian Press
QUEBEC — A Canadian company's
promise of easy home tests for HIV and syphilis cannot be trusted, the United
States Food and Drug Administration warned Monday.
The FDA issued an alert to U.S. consumers,
saying a series of home medical test kits sold over the Internet by
Montreal-based Globus Media are illegal, untested and could give misleading
results.
"The use of these products could result in
false results that could lead to significant adverse health consequences,"
said the FDA statement....
---------------
CBC News, Canada - 8 Feb 2005
http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2005/02/08/medical-tests-050208.html
Quebec company faces probe over home medical tests
Last Updated Tue, 08 Feb 2005 17:27:02 EST
CBC News
MONTREAL - Health Canada is investigating
whether a Canadian company is illegally selling home medical tests for
illnesses such as syphilis and HIV.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a
warning this week over the kits, saying that Montreal-based Globus Media was
selling them over the internet.
The Canadian watchdog said Monday that it is
looking into whether the tests are being sold in this country, where they
aren't approved for sale.
The FDA warned that the test kits are illegal,
untested and could be inaccurate....
---------------
The warning comes at an inopportune time. Curiously, the following
information, far more important than the news on the unreliable syphilis test
kit, appears to be unavailable on the Internet. Even more curiously, the
headline is not entirely accurate and to a considerable extent understates the
seriousness of the problem it announces.
Edmonton Journal
Saturday, February 26, 2005; A7
Quebec syphilis cases triple
The Canadian Press
Montreal
Quebec medical authorities say they are
troubled by recent statistics that show cases of syphilis tripled between 2003
and 2004.
Clinics and hospitals outside Montreal reported
112 cases of the sexually transmitted disease last year, compared with 39 in
2003. Eleven cases were reported in 2002 and four in 2001.
In Montreal, about 95 per cent of infected
patients have been homosexual men older than 30 years of age.
According to Dr Gilles Lambert, syphilis has
made a resurgence in North America and Europe to levels experienced in the
1950s.
With medicine available to treat the illness,
people believe they are less at risk, he added.
---End Article---
Given that the annual number of reported cases of syphilis in Quebec rose
by a factor of about three in each of the last three years, it may be reasonable
to expect that the number of homosexual men in Quebec infected with syphilis
will increase by more
than 300 in 2005. The question now is how long it will take for the syphilis
epidemic to cross over into the heterosexual population.
Chastity and marital fidelity are the best prevention against syphilis and other sexually transmitted
diseases. They are even safer than invasive
medical procedures. It goes without saying that intra-venous drug users who
share needles are at a very high risk of contracting STDs.
The Canadian Press article on the rise of syphilis in Quebec does not
mention whether the new cases of syphilis involve the new strain of syphilis
that medical doctors find very difficult to treat. More about
that in the articles identified in the following.
...The NZ AIDS Foundation has had to admit that
its “safe-sex” campaigns have failed to make much of an impact on changing the
behaviour on the homosexual and bisexual community due to boredom with the
safe-sex message and growing complacency. It has recognised that the incidence
of another STD, syphilis, is now on a dramatic rise among homosexuals. While
it can be treated with penicillin, if left untreated it can cause brain
damage, heart failure and ulcers. People with the disease have a weakened
immune system and are four times more likely to get HIV than those without it.
“Men-who-have-sex-with-men” (MSM), a new politically-correct term coined by
the homosexual media, have been identified as a prominent group in a recent
resurgence of syphilis in New Zealand. A drug-resistant new strain has now
been diagnosed....
Warnings of STD pestilence
Tuesday, 15 February 2005, 1:58 pm
Press Release: Society For Promotion Of Community Standards Inc.
Media Release 15
February 2005
Warnings of STD pestilence
Paying the due penalty for unnatural sex and indecent sex acts.
Rare STD on increase in Europe and USA
On Friday, New York
Health Department officials announced the discovery of a rare, potentially
highly aggressive, drug-resistant form of HIV in an unnamed man who used
crystal meth. The man had engaged in unprotected sex with multiple
partners while high on crystal....
In New York City, syphilis rates have increased 400
percent in the five years, with men who have sex with men accounting for
virtually all of the increase, according to the city Health Department.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Posted on Tue, Feb. 15, 2005
Drug
seduces many to reckless behavior
Crystal meth dulls inhibitions and has led to rising rates of HIV in gay
and bisexual men, experts say.
By Miriam Hill
Inquirer Staff Writer
The homosexual lobby, in denial of course, downplays it all:
In light of widely
ballyhooed fears that an “epidemic” of syphilis among gay men might lead to a
resurgence of new HIV infections—which proved false when the numbers of new
HIV diagnoses in San Francisco dropped last year—“the CDC et al have no
credibility and our continually traumatized community will opt for skepticism
over belief even when a real threat occurs,” Scondras said.
Windy City Times
AIDS Frenzy Hits NYC
by Bob Roehr, 2005-02-23
Here is the reality of syphilis that homosexual men that engage
in unsafe and unhealthy sexual practices find so hard to accept:
MSNBC News
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5387438/
Sexual Health
Drug-resistant syphilis is spreading
Study finds mutant strain no longer responds to
azithromycin
Updated: 4:59 p.m. ET July 7, 2004
A fast-spreading
mutant strain of syphilis has proved resistant to the antibiotic pills
that are offered to some patients as an alternative to painful penicillin
shots.
Since the late 1990s,
doctors and public health clinics have been giving azithromycin to some
syphilis patients because the long-acting antibiotic pill was highly
effective and easy to use. Four pills taken at once were usually enough to
cure syphilis.
But now researchers
at University of Washington in Seattle have found at least 10 percent of
syphilis samples from patients at sexually transmitted disease clinics in
four cities had a strain resistant to azithromycin.
Strain is
'widely distributed geographically'
“That suggests that
this mutation is pretty widely distributed geographically,” said Sheila A.
Lukehart, research professor of infectious diseases.
The percentage of
samples from San Francisco with the mutant strain jumped from 4 percent in
1999-2002 to 37 percent in 2003, with the increase taking place largely
among gay or bisexual men with multiple partners.
The study was
reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.
Experts say doctors
should switch to penicillin or other antibiotics if azithromycin does not
work. But some of those antibiotics can cause nausea and other side
effects and must be taken for two weeks; some patients do not complete
their treatment and are not cured.
Experts said the
findings also show that syphilis patients treated with azithromycin must
have follow-up tests to be sure they are cured. After syphilis sores
disappear, the disease can silently attack the brain and cause dementia,
paralysis and death.
Penicillin has long
been the recommended treatment for syphilis. But it must be given in two
buttocks injections much more painful than typical shots, because a large
amount of the solution must be forced into the muscle.
Rate of
syphilis climbing in U.S.
Syphilis decreased in the United States through the 1990s,
then climbed 19 percent from 2000 to 2003 to about 7,100 cases, according
to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC attributed
the spike to a twelvefold rise in cases among gay and bisexual men, many
of whom are also infected with the AIDS virus.
Lukehardt studied 114
syphilis samples from Seattle, San Francisco, Baltimore and Dublin,
Ireland, finding 28 percent were resistant to azithromycin, including 88
percent of the Dublin samples.
Dr. John Douglas,
director of the CDC’s division of sexually transmitted disease prevention,
said the agency is formulating a plan to test for resistant strains in
some areas.
_____________
See also:
Syphilis is back, especially among gay men with HIV, by Maria Cheng
AP Medical Writer, Dec 27, 2007
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