Syphilis

LOS ANGELES -- Men undertaking risky homosexual activity are fueling a sharp increase in the incidence of syphilis and a smaller but concerning rise in gonorrhea resistant to commonly used antibiotics, federal researchers said yesterday. Those increases come at a time when venereal disease rates among historically important risk groups, especially women and minorities, have been declining, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. San Francisco, as in previous years, had the highest incidence of syphilis, with a rate of 45.9 cases per 100,000 people.

WASHINGTON - Maryland ranked in the Top 20 states for a second year with the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea and placed fourth for syphilis, according to the latest data from the Maryland health department. "We've been hovering in the top five [for syphilis] for the past few years," said Barbara Conrad, sexually transmitted disease prevention division chief for the Maryland Health Department, who expects 2008 data in the next month. Maryland ranked fifth for primary and secondary syphilis, second for congenital syphilis, 14th for chlamydia and 18th for gonorrhea in 2006.

Gonorrhea cases in Baltimore declined to a historic low last year while syphilis cases, in decline for four years, increased slightly, Dr. Peter L. Beilenson, the city's health commissioner, said yesterday. Efforts to get treatment for infected patients -- and to test their partners for infection -- have paid off in a continued decline in gonorrhea, Beilenson said. He also credited increased condom use among teen-agers and young adults, which is partly an outgrowth of rising consciousness about the risk of AIDS.

BETTY JAMES, 90 Co-founder of Slinky company Betty James, who co-founded the company that made the Slinky and beat the odds as a single mother in the late 1950s to become a successful executive, died Thursday, said a spokeswoman for the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In 1945, Mrs. James and her husband, Richard, founded the company that would later make Slinky, the toy for which she was inducted into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame in 2001. She took over management of James Industries Inc. 14 years after the company was founded, after her husband left her to follow a religious cult in Bolivia.

FALLING CRIME in Baltimore has added to speculation that the drug abuse linked to other criminal activity also may be declining. However, a new statistic shows illegal drugs still create a ripple of problems: Baltimore has the nation's No. 1 syphilis rate among major cities.Most of the syphilis cases are concentrated in poor neighborhoods where women are trading sex for crack cocaine. Baltimore reported 80 cases of syphilis per 100,000 residents in 1996, compared with second-ranked Memphis' rate of 46 per 100,000.

Baltimore, the city with a rock star mayor, is getting its shot on MTV. But it's not because of Mayor Martin O'Malley's politics or even his Irish music. It's because of the city's Health Department and its efforts against syphilis. MTV plans to highlight Baltimore for moving from the city known for having the highest rate of syphilis and gonorrhea infection in America to becoming the No. 1 city in the nation in its reduction of syphilis infections. The city had an 83 percent decrease in syphilis cases during the past five years, according to Dr. Peter Beilenson, the city's health director.

Baltimore's Health Department has ended the three-decade practice of tracing the sexual partners of people with gonorrhea, deciding to concentrate its efforts on the city's resurgent syphilis problem and its persistent AIDS epidemic.Health Commissioner Peter Beilenson said the city has by no means conquered gonorrhea, even though cases have fallen substantially over the past decade. He said Baltimore remains one of the top four cities for gonorrhea, and there is no guarantee that the illness won't rebound with the easing of surveillance.

Rates of gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis in Baltimore all fell in 2005, Health Department officials said yesterday. The decline extends long-term trends that began with stepped-up efforts in the 1990s to reduce rates of sexually transmitted disease in the city, which were then the worst in the nation. Since 1995, gonorrhea rates in the city have fallen 45 percent, from more than 1,000 cases per 100,000 population to 547 cases per 100,000, according to the Baltimore Health Department.

Baltimore's syphilis rate, which has been both a badge of shame and the brunt of jokes on late-night television, has fallen from its position as the nation's highest. That distinction now belongs to Indianapolis, which saw its rate more than double in 1999 in the wake of a sex-for-crack trade that hit the Midwestern city later than it did most urban centers. According to a preliminary report released yesterday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Baltimore's rate dropped 45 percent last year.

Baltimore's syphilis epidemic is showing the first signs of ebbing since it took off in the early 1990s, though the city continues to post the highest rate of any major U.S. municipality.Based on a tally through September, the city health department projects no more than 500 cases through the end of 1998 -- down from 667 last year. This would mark the first downturn since 1994, when soaring caseloads prompted criticism of public health efforts."Obviously, we're too high for comfort, but I'm confident we're headed in the right direction," said Dr. Peter L. Beilenson, the city health commissioner.

Death rates for 13 diseases that can be prevented by childhood vaccinations are at all-time lows in the United States, according to a study released this week. The study, by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, is the first time that the agency has searched historical records going back to 1900 to compile estimates of cases, hospitalizations and deaths for all the diseases children are routinely vaccinated against.

Looking for something different to do on your 39th birthday? How about having a total stranger executed by impalement during the party? What? Too macabre? Maybe you just need to develop a French sense of humor, the kind Emmanuel Chabrier had when he wrote his comic opera L'etoile in 1877. Yes, the prospect of a tortuous demise serves as a plot-driving device in this work. And one of the score's best numbers includes a description of just how the king's ordinary-looking armchair can, with the turn of a handle, provide the unsuspecting sitter with, um, a sticky experience.

Rates of gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis in Baltimore all fell in 2005, Health Department officials said yesterday. The decline extends long-term trends that began with stepped-up efforts in the 1990s to reduce rates of sexually transmitted disease in the city, which were then the worst in the nation. Since 1995, gonorrhea rates in the city have fallen 45 percent, from more than 1,000 cases per 100,000 population to 547 cases per 100,000, according to the Baltimore Health Department.

LOS ANGELES -- Men undertaking risky homosexual activity are fueling a sharp increase in the incidence of syphilis and a smaller but concerning rise in gonorrhea resistant to commonly used antibiotics, federal researchers said yesterday. Those increases come at a time when venereal disease rates among historically important risk groups, especially women and minorities, have been declining, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. San Francisco, as in previous years, had the highest incidence of syphilis, with a rate of 45.9 cases per 100,000 people.

"I'm going out with a new friend from D.C. We'll start at a funky new spot - Busboys and Poets Coffee Bookstore on 14th Street. After a caffeine fix and some intellectual vitamins, we'll head to the Tuskegee exhibit at Morgan State, and end up taping a segment for a TV show pilot in downtown Baltimore." Philip Merrill, antiques appraiser and owner, Nanny Jack & Co. (Beyond Legacy: The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, noon to 4 p.m. today and tomorrow, Murphy Fine Arts Center, Morgan State University.

The number of newly diagnosed HIV and AIDS cases among gay and bisexual men grew 11 percent in the four-year period ending last year, raising fears of a new outbreak of the disease in a group experts say has become increasingly casual about taking protective measures. The increase was offset somewhat by a decline in new cases among intravenous drug users, so the overall rate increased by 1 percent over the same period, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released yesterday on World AIDS Day. The CDC estimates that about 40,000 new HIV infections occur each year in the United States, and that between 850,000 and 950,000 Americans are living with the disease, with about 280,000 not knowing they are infected, said Dr. Ronald O. Valdiserri, deputy director of the CDC's HIV prevention program.

William Mason of Baltimore is suspicious of doctors and medicines and government health programs, even now when he desperately needs them. As he considers why, his reason settles on a name that has lurked in his mind for 15 or 20 years.Tuskegee. In one word, all the proof in the world. It is a word that resonates fearfully in black communities throughout America when critical health-care decisions are made. Often they are life and death decisions.Tuskegee was the rural Alabama town where the government lied to 400 black men who were sick with syphilis.

Four years after Baltimore topped the charts nationwide in syphilis, cases of the sexually transmitted disease have dropped by nearly two-thirds, according to new figures released yesterday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The decline, part of a national trend, stems from a combination of efforts over the past few years, including outreach to addicts, education of physicians and testing and treatment of those arrested at the Central Booking and Intake Center. Another crucial element has been advice from churches, hospitals and community groups on strategies for stopping the epidemic.

Gonorrhea cases in Baltimore declined to a historic low last year while syphilis cases, in decline for four years, increased slightly, Dr. Peter L. Beilenson, the city's health commissioner, said yesterday. Efforts to get treatment for infected patients -- and to test their partners for infection -- have paid off in a continued decline in gonorrhea, Beilenson said. He also credited increased condom use among teen-agers and young adults, which is partly an outgrowth of rising consciousness about the risk of AIDS.

Ernest Hendon, 96, the last surviving participant in the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the U.S. government's 40-year study of the effects of untreated syphilis on a group of black men in rural Macon County, Ala., died Jan. 16 of causes associated with aging in Opelika, Ala. Mr. Hendon was one of 623 black men who unwittingly participated in the U.S. Public Health Service study of "the effects of untreated syphilis in the Negro male." The study began in 1932 and ended in 1972 after former Public Health Service investigator Peter Buxton exposed the study's unethical procedures to an Associated Press reporter.