Increased Methamphetamine, Injection Drug, and Heroin Use Among Women and Heterosexual Men with Primary and Secondary Syphilis - United States, 2013-2017.

During 2013-2017, the national annual rate of reported primary and secondary (P&S) syphilis cases in the United States increased 72.7%, from 5.5 to 9.5 cases per 100,000 population (1). The highest rates of P&S syphilis are seen among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (collectively referred to as MSM) (2), and MSM continued to account for the majority of cases in 2017 (1). However, during 2013-2017, the P&S syphilis rate among women increased 155.6% (from 0.9 to 2.3 cases per 100,000 women), and the rate among all men increased 65.7% (from 10.2 to 16.9 cases per 100,000 men), indicating increasing transmission between men and women in addition to increasing transmission between men (1). To further understand these trends, CDC analyzed national P&S syphilis surveillance data for 2013-2017 and assessed the percentage of cases among women, men who have sex with women only (MSW), and MSM who reported drug-related risk behaviors during the past 12 months. Among women and MSW with P&S syphilis, reported use of methamphetamine, injection drugs, and heroin more than doubled during 2013-2017. In 2017, 16.6% of women with P&S syphilis used methamphetamine, 10.5% used injection drugs, and 5.8% used heroin during the preceding 12 months. Similar trends were seen among MSW, but not among MSM. These findings indicate that a substantial percentage of heterosexual syphilis transmission is occurring among persons who use these drugs, particularly methamphetamine. Collaboration between sexually transmitted disease (STD) control programs and partners that provide substance use disorder services will be important to address recent increases in heterosexual syphilis.

Emerging technologies for HIV prevention for MSM: what we have learned, and ways forward.

Technology-enabled HIV research and prevention has emerged in the past 10 years as an exciting dynamic field that offers great potential to help bring HIV prevention efforts to scale in key risk communities. Evolutions in technologies and in HIV epidemics suggest mutual opportunities to reach most at risk populations in novel ways. New technologies cannot completely replace interventions and services currently delivered by the people. However, we suggest that emerging technologies hold promise to bring services to scale and produce efficiencies in reaching rural populations of men who have sex with men (MSM), connecting with populations who are not reached in current urban outreach efforts, and providing services or research surveys that can be described algorithmically. Furthermore, the types of technologies (eg, internet-based, smartphone-based, text messaging) should be matched with both the content to be delivered and the technology usage patterns of target populations. We suggest several key principles and lessons learned that comprise a framework in which to consider the opportunities of technologies and HIV prevention and research. Future directions include improvement of data quality in online surveying, better characterization of biases, developing improved sampling approaches, working with funders to ensure compatibility of funding mechanisms and online research proposals, and promoting consensus approaches to the duplication and presentation of research and program evaluation results from online research. Given the current calls for comprehensive packages of prevention services for MSM, effective prevention might require an intentional combination of technology-enabled prevention services to achieve scale and strategic use of personally delivered package components in cases where non-algorithmic services, such as individualized counseling, are needed.