An old drug offers a new way to stop STIs
A promising line of attack against sexually transmitted infections puts a cheap and widely available medication to a new use.
The treatment – a form of post-exposure prophylaxis, or PEP – is a dose of the antibiotic doxycycline taken in the hours immediately after sex which works to extinguish an STI before it leads to symptoms or spreads to others.
A growing body of research shows using doxycycline in this way can substantially lower the risk of contracting three of the most common bacterial STIs — chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis.
Called doxy-PEP, the preventative treatment has instilled enough confidence that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to roll out guidance later this summer to give doctors and public health departments a roadmap for how to offer it.
While doxy-PEP will not be recommended for everyone, including most women, and the implications for antibiotic resistance need to be closely monitored, experts say its potential to curb the rising rates of STIs cannot be ignored.
"Our efforts to, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University Alabama, Birmingham. "It's time to do something different."
