A couple of years ago, the television show “Grey’s Anatomy” did an episode where Seattle Grace Hospital experienced a syphilis outbreak that could be traced back to a single person. And while that may have been scripted, Detroit’s prominent statistics in the number of sexually transmitted diseases is anything but the figment of the imaginations of a committee paid to write believable stories. How believable is it though?
According to the Center for Disease Control, as of September 2008, Michigan ranked fourth in the United States in reported cases for gonorrhea, sixth for chlamydia, and 18th for syphilis. Thirty-eight percent of the gonorrhea cases in Michigan come from Detroit and 62 percent from southeastern Michigan. Wayne County has had an 85 percent increase since last year.
The CDC reports that as of Sept. 30 there have been 11,238 cases of gonorrhea, which equates to about 4,270 people in Detroit alone. But don’t forget that according to Wayne State, 80 percent of its students commute to school, mostly from the metropolitan Detroit area, where another 22 percent of the reported cases in the entire state originate.
Chlamydia leads the STD charts with more than 30,540 cases as of Sept. 30. Detroit accounts for 22 percent of those cases, and southeastern Michigan represents 55 percent of the total. That’s 6,719 people with chlamydia in Detroit, add another 10, 078 people in the metropolitan area, reaching a total of 16,797 people in and around the city of Detroit afflicted with chlamydia.
As of fall 2007, WSU states that 33,240 students are enrolled. Compare that with chlamydia, and the number of people afflicted with the disease in and around Detroit is about half the total number of people that attend this school.
Dr. Jambunathan Ramanathan is a board-certified infectious disease specialist and internal medicine physician. He is on the front lines of sexually transmitted diseases in Detroit.
“Chlamydia differs in that it has a tendency to be asymptomatic, meaning it can go unnoticed very easily,” Ramanathan said. “Gonorrhea and syphilis tend to produce a rash or discharge and burning on urination.”
“Syphilis is a great imitator of rashes, it begins in the primary phase with a painless ulcer and if it remains untreated will progress to a secondary phase transforming into a body rash.”
Syphilis is transmissible in its primary and secondary phases. One scary thought is the fact that syphilis is possible to pass on even without intercourse.
“While that is dependent on many factors occurring simultaneously, it is possible,” Ramanathan said.
In the secondary phase of syphilis, the body rash tends to occur on the palms of the hands and the bottoms of the feet. If a patient with syphilis has the moist palm rash and shakes the hand of someone who has cuts in the skin, it is possible to transmit the disease from person to person. According to Ramanathan, after about a year, untreated syphilis will go into a latency phase where it may not resurface for years.
Sexually transmitted diseases left untreated can cause serious harm. Ramanathan said diseases like chlamydia left untreated for years, or repeated exposure to the infection, can cause infertility in women by degrading the fallopian tubes.
“Simply having these STDs increases the likelihood of contracting the HIV virus due to behavioral and biological reasons,” Ramanathan said.
The tests for STDs now are relatively non-invasive, and the treatments could not be simpler. One shot of penicillin will clear up syphilis in its primary and secondary phases. It may just take an extra shot or two for the latency phase. Due to resistant strains of gonorrhea when treated with fluorquinolones, the CDC has banned their use, and third generation cephalosporins are now used to treat the disease. Chlamydia can be taken care of with zithromax.
