Feds eye antibiotic doxycycline for STI prevention as infection rates skyrocket
Chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis are running rampant, and doctors are hoping to combat these sexually transmitted infections (STIs) with the antibiotic doxycycline.
Researchers recently published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine suggesting the drug’s promise in preventing STIs. Sold for more than 50 years, it is already used to fight or prevent a variety of illnesses, according to the National Institutes of Health. It is also given to combat STIs, but not as a prophylactic.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is developing guidelines for using doxycycline to stop such infections from taking root, said Dr. Leandro Mena, director of the CDC’s STD prevention division.
Rather than a substitute for condoms, the pills would serve as a backup for those times when condoms fail or are never deployed.
Most at risk for STIs are men who have sex with men, with rates especially high among Black and Hispanic Americans and Native Americans. The infections can cause everything from pelvic inflammatory disease to birth defects.
Rates especially increased during the pandemic-induced lockdown, when fewer people got tested, the CDC said last year. Experts believe online dating, inadequate sex education and a drop in condom use have helped fuel the surge.
“Sexually transmitted infections are an enormous, low-priority public health problem,” said Dr. John M. Douglas Jr., a retired health official who lectures at the Colorado School of Public Health. “They’ve been a low-priority problem for decades, in spite of the fact that they are the most commonly reported kind of infectious disease.”
In the study, about 500 gay men, bisexual men and transgender women in Seattle and San Francisco who had had STIs in the past took one doxycycline pill within 72 hours of unprotected sex. They were more than 90% less likely to contract chlamydia, 80% less likely to get syphilis and more than 50% less likely to be infected with gonorrhea, the researchers found.
Some newer STIs that are emerging and being monitored by the CDC were not part of the study. In addition antibiotics, including doxycycline, don’t work against viral infections such as herpes, HIV or monkeypox, whose lesions can resemble an STI.
With News Wire Services
