Syphilis rate in Allegheny Co. still high but on the decline

Syphilis infections rose 67 percent nationwide from 2011 to 2015, prompting the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue a Call to Action late last month to reduce the rate, which included a near doubling of cases in Allegheny County from 2014 to 2015.

But the Allegheny County Health Department is seeing improvements in 2016, with preliminary numbers showing the infection rate has dropped by a third.

The 2016 number, expected in the range of 85 cases once the state Health Department finalizes its count, remains high when compared with the 68 cases in 2014. But it’s a notable improvement over the 2015 total of 129 cases of primary or secondary infections — the two earliest stages of syphilis.

The number isn’t low enough to merit a celebration.

“Overall, the message is, it appears the number of syphilis cases in 2016 is less than 2015. That’s the good news. But it’s still concerning that we see syphilis cases at high levels, and we really need to act on a number of different strategies to gain control of it in Allegheny County,” said Harold Wiesenfeld, medical director of the county’s STD/HIV program. “We’re not sure whether this decrease in numbers will be sustained or not, and we need to observe trends. So we’re not pulling back any efforts in reducing STDs [sexually transmitted diseases].”

A continuing problem, he said, is that people with human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, now at undetectable levels are becoming sexually active once again, with half of the men with syphilis in the county also having HIV.

Efforts to lower these numbers include promoting awareness among physicians to more readily test high-risk patients, including men who have sex with men. The greatest level of infection, Dr. Wiesenfeld said, involves young African-American men who are sexually active with other men.

The county also is working on partnerships with other agencies on awareness and additional testing, he said.

Although gonorrhea and chlamydia cases remained largely unchanged in Allegheny County in 2016, the CDC is reporting higher national levels, with doubledigit increases, indicating that national health officials continue losing ground in the battle. From 2011 to 2015, the number of syphilis cases in Pennsylvania jumped more than 50 percent, with West Virginia’s cases soaring by more than 200 percent.

“Syphilis rates are increasing among women and their babies, and men throughout the United States,” the CDC stated in its Call to Action report. “Untreated syphilis can cause severe medical issues. Efforts are needed to create new tools to detect and treat syphilis, increase testing, control the further spread of syphilis, and improve electronic medical records in order to improve patient outcomes.”