20 million new cases every year.
By The American Bazaar Staff
WASHINGTON, DC: A stunning 110 million Americans, which is roughly 1/3rd of the country’s population, are infected with STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases), with 20 million new cases emerging every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The eight most common sexually transmitted diseases are: chlamydia, gonorrhea, hepatitis B virus (HBV), genital herpes, HIV, human papillomavirus (HPV), syphilis and trichomoniasis, which cost the country $16 billion annually in direct medical costs, says a report in Live Science.
Of the 110 million cases, about 50.5 million infections are in men while 59.5 million are in women. Fifty percent of the total number of cases are in the age group of 15-24. The number could be even higher as a lot of people are not aware that they are infected, and so goes unreported every year.
Chlamydia and HPV are the two most common newly acquired sexually transmitted infections affecting millions of people each year, whereas new infections with HIV and hepatitis B occur in less than 50,000 people yearly, says the report.
According to Elizabeth Torrone, a researcher at the CDC’s center for STDs, the most commonly reported infection is chlamydia. But since many who are infected don’t show symptoms, the number could be far higher than the 1.4 million in 2012, a rate of 457 cases per 100,000 people.
The estimates of STD cases in the report come from a 2013 study, in which the CDC researchers looked at 2008 data. The most current data estimates that about 1.8 million people have chlamydia, as opposed to 1.6 million in the previous study, Torrone told Live Science.
The breakdown of the estimated existing STDS: HPV – 79,100,000; Genital Herpes – 24,100,000; Trichomoniasis – 3,710,000; Chlamydia – 1,570,000; HIV – 900,000; Gonorrhea – 800,000; HBV – 420,000; Syphilis – 117,000.
The breakdown of the estimated new infections: HPV – 14,100,000; Chlamydia – 2,860,000; Trichomoniasis – 1,090,000; Gonorrhea – 800,000; Genital Herpes – 776,000; Syphilis – 55,400; HIV – 40,000; HBV – 19,000.