August 31, 2006 -- CDC Updates STD Treatment Guidelines

In a comprehensive 144-page set of guidelines for the prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) released earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) details steps to be taken by healthcare providers in treating and counseling individuals. The guidelines note that prevention and control of STDs are based on five major strategies:

• education and counseling of persons at risk on ways to change sexual behavior;
• identification of asymptomatically infected persons and of symptomatic persons unlikely to seek diagnostic and treatment services;
• effective diagnosis and treatment of infected persons;
• evaluation, treatment, and counseling of sex partners of persons who are infected with an STD; and
• pre-exposure vaccination of persons at risk for vaccine-preventable STD.

The new guidelines, which update treatment guidelines issued in 2002, were developed by the CDC in consultation with a group of professionals knowledgeable in the field of STDs who met in Atlanta, Georgia, in April 2005. The full text of the guidelines is available at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5511a1.htm