Identifying Likely Syphilis Transmitters: Implications for Control and Evaluation

Abstract

Private physicians identified the most female cases; however, jail screening identified the most high-prevention-value female cases. Jail screening identified the most male cases; however, the STD clinic (self-referred) identified the most high-prevention-value cases. Partner notification identified relatively few high-value cases.

The characterisation of a recent syphilis outbreak in Sheffield, UK, and an evaluation of contact tracing as a method of control

“…Repeating partner notification interviews increases the proportion of provider referral agreements, because it gives patients who have initially opted for patient referral a chance to change their mind, and/or to bring contact information for provider referral. This tendency to switch from patient to provider referral, noted elsewhere, 12 illustrates the difficulty patients may have in notifying partners themselves, and the importance of health adviser support through repeat interviews.…”

The Number of Interviews Needed to Yield New Syphilis and Human Immunodeficiency Virus Cases Among Partners of People Diagnosed With Syphilis, North Carolina, 2015

“…7821422 This may signal that the public health establishment has not understood the community we are serving well enough to be asking the right questions to efficiently find new cases of syphilis. Further conversations between the public health community, syphilis index patients and those at risk of acquiring syphilis is needed to identify additional potential factors to assess (eg, specific phone apps; being linked to many partners in a network (network centrality); and total number of partners).…”

“…4 Other options for prioritizing partner services include the use of serologic indicators of recent infection (ie, Rapid Plasmin Reagin (RPR) or Venereal Disease Research Laboratory (VDRL) titer), local disease epidemiology (eg, young men), and location of the patient in certain settings or networks (eg, reporting meeting sex partners using particular phone apps).…”

“…Efficiency has been quantified in many ways, 56 including as the number of treated partners per case interview, 7 likelihood and magnitude of future transmission, 4 and number of infected partners found per case. 89 More recently, calculation of the number of patients needed to interview to identify a new case of disease that is, number needed to interview (NNTI), has been used to assess the efficiency of partner investigation.…”

Pence, Putin, Mbeki and Their HIV/AIDS-Related Crimes Against Humanity: Call for Social Justice and Behavioral Science Advocacy

“…Scott County's HIV outbreak occurred in a context of historically low spending on public health services [4]. Other recent Indiana outbreaks of infectious diseases were similarly met with poorly resourced responses that foreshadowed the HIV crisis, including outbreaks of syphilis [5] and tuberculosis [6]. Underfunded HIV testing services translated to poor coverage and virtually no rural surveillance, causing delay in detecting and stemming early cases [7].…”