Syphilis testing speeds up

More than 200 people were given rapid tests for syphilis at Sunday’s Midsumma Carnival in an effort to curb an increase in reported cases of the infection.
Experts from the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, part of The Alfred Hospital, launched the new test last week as the number of infections in gay men and men who have sex with men (MSM) soars.
According to the Victorian Department of Human Services, the number of cases of syphilis has risen from just a single case in 2001, to almost 1000 diagnoses within the last two years. Experts claim the unprecedented rise is mostly restricted to the gay male and MSM community.
Syphilis can be transmitted in a number of different ways including during oral and penetrative sex, with experts attributing the rise to an increase in unprotected anal sex.
It’s the first Australian on-the-spot test conducted and involves a simple blood test, similar to a diabetes test, with a pin prick to the finger. Blood is then transferred onto a strip which takes just 15 minutes to deliver the verdict. The speed of diagnoses is in contract to the previous week-long wait for results.
Entertainer Kaye Sera lent her support at the launch to promote the new test in colourful fashion, performing her hit STI’s and STD’s Are Really Quite Atrocious.
The Victorian AIDS Council heavily promoted vigilance against the outbreak in MSM last year.
However, according to Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, Associate Clinical Professor Marcus Chen, no reduction was reached in 2008.
Professor Chen said previous testing methods had also been ineffective in controlling the disease.
-œWhat’s quite disturbing about syphilis is that a high proportion of cases are asymptomatic -” in other words when someone is infected they actually don’t know, so if you don’t test, you won’t detect the infection, but if you do detect it, it’s completely curable, with relatively simple treatment.
Symptoms of syphilis usually begin with one or more painless but highly infectious, sores on the skin. If someone else comes into close contact with these sores, they can also catch the condition.
If untreated for several years syphilis can result in serious infection of the brain and heart, as well as nerve and liver damage. In HIV-positive men, syphilis disease progression can also be accelerated.
Professor Chen said the spread of the infection in Australia was part of a wider global rise in the condition.
-œFor decades after World War II, in most industrialised countries, syphilis became very well controlled, it also became a relatively uncommon condition, but in the early 2000s a marked increase, specifically among MSM, emerged in quite a number of industrialised countries in Europe, North America ­-” so what we are seeing here is really part of an international phenomenon, he said.
Melbourne Sexual Health Centre director Professor Kit Fairley said an increase in testing among MSM was the key to controlling the outbreak.
-œThere continues to be an increase in notifications for infectious syphilis among this group [MSM]. Coupled with high rates of other sexually transmissible infections (STIs), like gonorrhoea and chlamydia, it indicates the control of STIs in this group remains challenging.