Syphilis is resurging in the United States: once on the brink of eradication, now raging again

The Covid-19 pandemic has understandably dominated the news cycle for almost 2 years now. As we hopefully get past the Omicron variant, it’s important not to lose sight of the currently over 7 million infections with Treponema pallidum worldwide. The WHO has set ambitious targets to reduce the incidence of syphilis by 90% by 2030! At the start of this millennium, syphilis rates were so low that public health officials believed that the sexually transmitted infection was expected to be close to eradication. However, even with the availability of penicillin and safe sex education campaigns, rates in the US started growing again in 2001 and continued to increase steadily for the next two decades. From 31,618 reported cases in 2000, cases doubled to 63,454 in 2014, to 129,813 cases in 2019 nationwide according to the CDC. In Florida, Health-care professionals are calculating an 85% increase in the number of residents who contracted syphilis...