Doxycycline Seen As Solution To Soaring STD Rates
STD rates have been skyrocketing for years (especially among gays who, obviously, don’t use condoms), and taking a well-known drug like doxycyline might sound fine, until you realize that the more antibiotics you take, the more likely you are to develop a tolerance to them. Good luck fighting off your next bacterial infection. Via AP:
To try to turn the tide, many doctors see promise in doxycycline, a cheap antibiotic that has been sold for more than 50 years.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is drafting recommendations for using it as a kind of morning-after pill for preventing STDs, said Dr. Leandro Mena, director of the agency’s STD prevention division.
In the study, about 500 gay men, bisexual men and transgender women in Seattle and San Francisco with previous STD infections took one doxycycline pill within 72 hours of unprotected sex. Those who took the pills were about 90% less likely to get chlamydia, about 80% less likely to get syphilis, and more than 50% less likely to get gonorrhea compared with people who did not take the pills after sex, the researchers found.
[AP]
