Latest CDC treatment guidelines try to rein in STDs

Experts say rules are a step in the right direction, although some present implementation challenges.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. June 3, 2002.

Women who test positive for Chlamydia should be retested for the infection within three or four months after treatment. Men who have sex with men should be tested for sexually transmitted diseases annually. And condoms with the spermicide nonoxynol-9 are out of style, STD preventionwise.

These are just a few of the recommendations in the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's STD guidelines issued in May.

The guidelines, which are revised every four years, are the latest attempt to improve control of STDs and have been generally praised by physicians.

For instance, many doctors have long been attempting to implement rescreening protocols for their patients with Chlamydia. It is also not news that condoms with nonoxynol-9 do not provide additional protection against HIV and other STDs.

Other changes include recommendations that a different antibiotic be prescribed for gonorrhea because drug resistance has emerged to the fluoroquinolones in California and Hawaii. Alternate drugs should be used in these areas of the country or if the physician believes the patient acquired the infection from these states.

"We have some chinks in our armor as far as the quinolones go, but the cephalosporins are hanging pretty tough," said Kevin Ault, MD, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

New tests that indicate the type of genital herpes are also being recommended as a means of determining treatment for that STD. [...]