Sexual disease cases increase

Thursday, April 4, 2002 | 10:57 a.m.

Clark County Health District officials attributed a large increase in the rates of sexually transmitted diseases to a push in the past year to raise awareness and reporting of the infections.

The rates of both gonorrhea and chlamydia rose dramatically last year, with chlamydia showing an increase from 194 per 100,000 in 2000 to 273 per 100,000 in 2001 and gonorrhea from 97 per 100,000 to 122 per 100,000 during the same period.

For the first time in at least three years, the county made a push to have patients test for gonorrhea and chlamydia last year, as well as visiting 200 clinics and physicians to ask them to report test results, Mary Ellen Harrell, program manager for communicable diseases for the county, said.

"The increased testing has given us the numbers," Harrell said. "The main message is that these diseases are still out there, and that they can be prevented and treated -- but only if people are aware of them."

One of the difficulties presented by both diseases is that they often don't exhibit symptoms and so most people don't know they are infected with the bacteria that cause them, Harrell said. Gonorrhea can exhibit symptoms in males, but it doesn't always, she said. The main course of treatment of both is antibiotics.

The health district and the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are concerned about the appearance in recent years of strains of the disease-causing bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics -- including cases reported in California and Hawaii. None has been reported in Nevada.

Harrell said that left untreated, both diseases can lead to infertility in women.

The county promotes prevention through the use of condoms.