It’s the weekend and you’re out and about and under the age of 35. There’s something you need to know:
Alaska’s 2018 infectious disease report is out, and sexually transmitted diseases are trying to get in your pants.
Compared to 2017, chlamydia is up 4 percent statewide, gonorrhea is up 3 percent, and syphilis, while the raw numbers are small, is up 289 percent. Year after year, these numbers keep creeping higher.
In Anchorage, syphilis cases went from 21 in 2017 to 85 in 2018. The statewide total jumped from 25 to 113, so most diagnosed syphilis cases are in Anchorage.
Also in Anchorage, Â there were 1,283 cases of gonorrhea reported in 2017. By 2018, the case count rose to 1,375.
Unsurprisingly, the state’s largest city also has the highest raw numbers of chlamydia, jumping from 2,522 to 2,677 between 2017 and 2018.
Chlamydia also puts Alaska on the map, as the No. 1 state. Â In 2017, more than 1.7 million cases of chlamydia were reported to the CDC. But Alaska is No. 1 for this disease, which is most often asymptomatic. 85 percent of those diagnosed with it had no symptoms.
As in Alaska, gonorrhea rates are rising across the country, and the medical community is running out of treatment options to cure what is becoming increasingly drug-resistant infection. Since 2012, gonorrhea in Alaska is up 208 percent.
Alaska has the highest rate of the infectious sexually transmitted disease in the country. Half of STDs are among young people ages 15 to 24 years.
So be sure to have fun this weekend, and if you swipe right on that dating app, don’t bring home anything you don’t want to tell your doctor about.
