«Breaking Pic News» Health officials beg doctors to screen pregnant women for syphilis

US health officials are urging doctors to screen pregnant women for syphilis early and often in order to stop the disease's sudden upsurge. 

Despite previous declines in infants born with syphilis due to exposure from their mothers, rates of this congenital form of the sexually transmitted disease (STD) actually increased from 2012 to 2016.  

When passed from a pregnant woman to her infant, syphilis can cause birth defects, brain damage and even death. 

The suggestion to screen all pregnant women for the STD is not a new one, but the USPSTF is reasserting its recommendation to head off these dangerous increases. 

US health officials are urging doctors to screen pregnant women for syphilis as soon as they find out they are pregnant amid a 40 percent surge in babies infected with the STD 

The invention and introduction of penicillin - which is still the first-line treatment for syphilis - to American health care more than 80 years ago drastically reduced the number of syphilis cases in the US. 

Perhaps most importantly, the drug's unprecedented effectiveness at treating syphilis meant that pregnant women could get treated, protecting their babies from inheriting the infection and perhaps saving their lives. 

Yet in 2016, there were still over 88,000 new cases of syphilis in the US, and about 630 of those were in infants who had gotten the disease from their mothers.

Syphilis is unpleasant and, after lying dormant for many years, can do serious harm to the health of people of all ages. 

But the disease is especially dangerous to developing babies. 

Two out of every five babies born to women who have untreated syphilis will die as a result of the infection. 

The bacteria that causes syphilis, preponema pallidum, can cross through a mother's placenta into her baby's blood stream during pregnancy, or infect the baby through vaginal contact during delivery. 

Infection badly impairs the baby's delicate process of development, as well as interfering with the changes the mother's body has to go through to support a growing fetus. 

Women with untreated syphilis may develop an overly large placenta, they may lose the baby during pregnancy, deliver early or have underdeveloped babies.

The infection can also lead to a whole host of birth defects, including anemia, blindness, deafness, abnormal teeth and noses and an enlarged liver or spleen. 

At the very least, these babies are often born with rashes and develop fevers that are more dangerous to them than to adult syphilis-sufferers.  

If a mother's syphilis is treated early in pregnancy, however, all of this may be avoidable. 

Since 2009, the USPSTF has recommended that women should get screened early on in their pregnancies. 

That isn't changing, but with a sharp, nearly 40 percent rise in cases of syphilis in babies, the agency is restating its advice with new urgency. 

It recommends that women get screened for the infection - via a pelvic exam and blood test - during their first visit to the doctor after they know they are pregnant. 

Echoing the sentiments of other health associations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the USPSTF also suggests that women that fall into the 'high-risk' category get tested again when they are 28 weeks pregnant. 

This group includes women in communities where the infection is common, those who have HIV or have been in jail.  

Previous studies have shown women who get diagnosed and treated are less likely to have infected babies, but that those reductions are far more dramatic when treatment is administered early. 

In an accompanying editorial, Dr Kenneth Katz, a dermatologist at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Francisco, said that the USPSTF's warning needs to be heeded by public health officials, OBGYNs, dermatologists and general practitioners alike.

On the whole, Dr Katz hints that women need better access to health care in general: 'Clearly, then, gaps in public health and clinical practice remain, as reported in a study of 458 mothers of infants with congenital syphilis in 2014.6 Of those mothers, approximately 20% received no prenatal care.'

Of those women, '43% received no treatment because (1) they were not tested during pregnancy; (2) they tested negative early in pregnancy but acquired syphilis later; or (3) they tested positive but were not treated,' he writes. 

'Early in the 21st century, syphilis—including congenital syphilis—still casts a shadow on the land.'    

Link article

https://hienalouca.com/2018/09/04/health-officials-beg-doctors-to-screen-pregnant-women-for-syphilis/
Main photo article US health officials are urging doctors to screen pregnant women for syphilis early and often in order to stop the disease’s sudden upsurge. 
Despite previous declines in infants born with syphilis due to exposure from their mothers, rates of this congenital form of the sexually transmitted ...

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Emily Ratajkowski is a showman, on and off the stage. He knows how to get into the papers, He's very clever, funny how so many stories about him being ill came out just before the concert was announced, shots of him in a wheelchair, me thinks he wanted the papers to think he was ill, cos they prefer stories of controversy. Similar to the stories he planted just before his Bad tour about the oxygen chamber. Worked a treat lol. He's older now so probably can't move as fast as he once could but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world, and it seems neither would 388,000 other people.

Dianne Reeves Health HienaLouca





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