Syphilis Testing among Men Who Have Had Rectal Gonorrhea and Chlamydia Tests, United States

DOI

10.2991/jegh.k.190620.001How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Rectal specimens; gonorrhea; chlamydia; syphilis; reactivity; confirmatory testing

Abstract

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends syphilis screening at least annually for sexually active men who have sex with men (MSM). The objective of this study is to assess the frequency of MSM testing for syphilis and how syphilis test results compared with results of rectal gonorrhea and chlamydia tests. In collaboration with a large US commercial laboratory, we identified men aged 15–60 years who had rectal chlamydia or gonorrhea tests during 09/01/2013–09/30/2015 as presumed MSM. We classified MSM as having current or past syphilis if during the study period they had (1) either a reactive qualitative non-treponemal test or at least a 1:1 quantitative non-treponemal test, and (2) they had a reactive treponemal test. Of 52,771 MSM, 14.3% had no syphilis testing, 4.8% had only treponemal testing (37.8% were reactive), 63.2% had only non-treponemal testing (2.0% were reactive), and 17.7% had both non-treponemal and treponemal testing (86.6% had current or past syphilis). Of those MSM who had reactive qualitative non-treponemal tests, at least 90% had no quantitative non-treponemal tests. Current or past syphilis was more common among MSM with positive rectal gonorrhea or chlamydia tests (24.1%) than MSM with negative rectal gonorrhea and chlamydia tests (13.0%, p < 0.005). Of MSM with any syphilis testing during 09/01/2013–09/30/2014, 64.8% also had annual repeat testing. Syphilis testing in general and repeat syphilis testing were frequent but suboptimal among MSM. It is important to continually monitor syphilis for MSM, especially for those MSM who had rectal chlamydia or gonorrhea infection.

Copyright

© 2019 Atlantis Press International B.V.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - JOUR
AU  - Guoyu Tao
AU  - Thomas A. Peterman
AU  - Thomas L. Gift
AU  - Melinda B. Nye
PY  - 2019
DA  - 2019/07/02
TI  - Syphilis Testing among Men Who Have Had Rectal Gonorrhea and Chlamydia Tests, United States
JO  - Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health
SP  - 153
EP  - 157
VL  - 9
IS  - 3
SN  - 2210-6014
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/jegh.k.190620.001
DO  - 10.2991/jegh.k.190620.001
ID  - Tao2019
ER  -