Syphilis rate up for 7th year in row

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. syphilis rate rose for the seventh straight year in 2007, driven by a continued surge in cases among homosexual and bisexual men, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday.

Since 2000, when the national syphilis rate sank to a low of 2.1 per 100,000 people after a decade of progress in the 1990s, the rate has soared by 76 percent, the CDC reported.

Homosexual and bisexual men accounted for 64 percent of syphilis cases in 2007, up from about 5 percent in 1999.

CDC officials expressed concern not only because the recent increases in this bacterial sexually transmitted disease follows years of declines, but also because syphilis can elevate a person's risk of being infected with the AIDS virus and the odds of giving it to someone else.

They also called rises among women and blacks troubling.

The overall national rate of syphilis rose by 12 percent in 2007 from 2006, reaching 3.7 cases per 100,000 people, based on preliminary CDC data released at a meeting in Chicago.

The rate for men was 6.4 per 100,000, a 14 percent rise from 2006.

The number of syphilis cases nationwide jumped to 11,181 in 2007 from 9,756 in 2006, with men accounting for six times as many cases as women. Rates for men and women had been roughly equivalent a decade ago.