Let’s talk about STDs, baby

Perhaps it’s the changing social atmosphere, perhaps its the medical advancements in the field, or perhaps it’s the emergence of other epidemics that steal media attention, but for one reason or another, no one is talking about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) anymore. Less than a decade ago, STDs seemed to be one of the most prevalent diseases that high-schoolers and adolescents were cautioned against, and even the news covered stories of sex ed revamps around the US. Yet now, STDs are rarely mentioned anymore as a serious concern for this age group. I’ve only heard talk about them in microbiology lectures and MCAT study books. However, a few years is not enough to eradicate this category of diseases in its entirety, and their effects remain just as potent as they were before.

STDs are very much still a major public health concern. A recent paper cites that more than one million STDs are acquired every day, and many of them are non-HIV diseases such as gonorrhea and chlamydia. The overwhelming coverage and response to the HIV crisis in the US led not only to drastic decreases in AIDS deaths, but also to exposing the severity of HIV to the public eye. Yet, the lens that focused on HIV concurrently shadowed other STDs from the vocabularies of millennial Americans. A public outbreak of gonorrhea shouldn’t be necessary for increased public support and funding for the struggling research of STD vaccines. In fact, the HIV programs in place now have significantly helped treat, cure, and support HIV patients, so it’s not a far shot to believe that the same could be said for other STDs.

This support would be crucial, because the development of vaccines for STDs is difficult, complicated by complex pathogen structure and antigenic variation. Gonorrhea especially, which experiences nearly 80 million new cases every year, remains difficult to crack, as it quickly develops antibiotic resistance. However, according to one study, even a partially-effective gonorrhea vaccine, when implemented with a strategy that targets susceptible patients, could reduce gonorrhea incidence by 90% in the next decade. The problem, of course, is that such a strategy would need to be implemented into a population that isn’t aware of the lurking dangers of STDs that stay out of the spotlight. Without social support, the bitter battle between vaccine researchers and adapting pathogens can only continue to wage on.