FRIDAY, Jan. 12, 2007 (HealthDay News) -- Syphilis was all but eliminated in China from 1960 to 1980 but has reappeared and become a rapidly increasing epidemic that requires urgent intervention, according to a report in the Jan. 13 issue of The Lancet medical journal.
Researchers analyzed national data on sexually transmitted diseases and found that the incidence of syphilis in China increased from fewer than 0.2 cases per 100,000 people in 1993 to 6.5 cases per 100,000 in 1999.
There's also been a major increase in the rate of congenital syphilis, from 0.01 cases per 100,000 live births in 1991 to 19.68 cases per 100,000 in 2005 -- an average annual increase of 71.9 percent.
Congenital syphilis occurs when a pregnant woman with the infection passes it to her baby in the womb. Many cases of congenital syphilis result in miscarriage or stillbirth. Babies who do survive often suffer serious health problems.
"Syphilis has returned to China with a vengeance. The data demonstrates a syphilis epidemic of such scope and magnitude that it will require terrific effort to intervene," report co-author Dr. Myron S. Cohen, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, said in a prepared statement.
He and his Chinese co-authors said the rapid rise in syphilis rates is the result of economic reforms and globalization, which have led to income gaps and a cultural climate that encourages prostitution. Other factors include increasing health-care costs and more people experimenting with sex at an earlier age and before marriage.
Cohen and his colleagues also noted that the virtual absence of syphilis in China between 1960 and 1980 means that the general population of young, sexually active people has no natural immunity to the disease.
When the Communists took power in 1949, China was in the midst of the one of the largest syphilis epidemics in history. The Communists made syphilis treatment and prevention a priority and, by 1964, the disease was rare in China. That began to change when the country started to open its borders in 1980, the researchers said.
More information
The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about syphilis.
