What You Should Know About the Current STD Rates

Luckily, the rates of certain dangerous STD’s (or STI’s) have been going down over the years, at least in the United States. The rates of contracting HIV for example have gone way down, by as much as third in the last decade.

There are plenty of other STD’s out there however, that are not going down in rates of contracting but are actually going up. This is notable because this is the first time that the rates have been going up for a while, which makes it seem like people are being a little more relaxed with their condom use or something.

Luckily most of these are easily treatable with an antibiotic when they are diagnosed, but some of them can live silently in the body which makes passing them along way too easy. And just because they’re silent it doesn’t mean that they aren’t causing problems in the body, particularly for women who can experience infertility due to where the infections travel in the reproduction system. It’s definitely something to look out for.

The STD’s we’re talking about are chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis. Chlamydia is the most commonly reported STD in the United States, and the?Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that there were 1.4 million cases reported in the U.S. in 2014, which is a jump of 2.8 percent from the previous year. This is the highest number that’s ever been reported of an STD, so you could say it’s pretty popular at the moment.

It’s important to know that it is possible to get false negatives on Chlamydia tests, and sometimes people can get tested multiple times with different results, so don’t assume that you’re in the clear if you get a negative test but have been exposed to it. This is of course, another thing that makes this bacterial infection so easy to spread.

The rates of gonorrhea are also going up, with 350,000 U.S. cases in 2014. Gonorrhea like chlamydia is also easily treatable with an antibiotic…unless you contract the super version of it which has proven to be resistant to certain antibiotics or requiring multiple treatments when one used to do.

For the most part, there are a lot of young people being affected by these increases in STD’s. People between the age of 15 and 24 account for about two thirds of all the cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea. It was previously estimated that that age group was closer to one half.

One of the reasons why people might be getting and giving more sexually transmitted infections, could be that people are more relaxed about their condom use. Particularly since the rates of HIV have gone down. These days we have ways of controlling the HIV virus, but it used to be considered a death sentence, which is pretty good incentive for wearing a condom. People don’t perceive the risks to be as high anymore, since even when they do get infections there are ways of handling them.

This doesn’t however mean that’s the best idea. Pregnancy and genital herpes can be a little more complicated. And not to mention, so can calling everyone you’ve exposed to an STD.