Number of STD, hepatitis cases up

According to the Public Health Department, 58 cases of chlamydia and 338 cases of hepatitis C have been diagnosed in Tuolumne County through September of this year.

Public Health Officer Dr. Todd Stolp said the figures put the county at the mid-range in the state when the Sierra Conservation Center is taken into account. The prison accounts for around 40 percent of the county’s hepatitis cases, Stolp estimated.

Both chlamydia and hepatitis C are sexually transmitted diseases, though hepatitis C is also spread through intravenous drug use.
  

State law requires that a long list of communicable diseases — including hepatitis and some STDs — be reported to public health officials when they are diagnosed. The latest county report runs through Oct. 3.

The report shows that the county also has tallied a handful of infections for various other diseases, including syphilis (1), gonorrhea (4), hepatitis B (12), tuberculosis (1), whooping cough (1) and salmonellosis (5).

Even though the county’s hepatitis C and chlamydia numbers “are pretty standard,” Stolp said, his office continually works to educate the public, and particularly students at area schools, about the dangers of such diseases.

“They’re very important public health issues that need to be addressed,” he said. “There are subsequent social risks and lifelong risks.”

To avoid getting an STD, advised Stolp, abstain from sex or use some kind of barrier protection, and avoid intravenous drug use. Those who “continue to make the poor decision to use IV drugs,” he said, should use clean needles.

“Folks who use (non-barrier) contraceptives need to also be reminded that they won’t protect them from the transmission of disease,” Stolp added.

The highest rate of chlamydia infections is found in 15- to 19-year-old females and 18- to 24-year-old males. Often, the disease goes undiagnosed because it has few symptoms.

“It’s the most commonly reported sexually transmitted disease and the most common cause of female infertility,” Stolp said.

Meanwhile, intravenous drug users are at the highest risk for contracting hepatitis C.

Chlamydia is a bacteria and can be treated with antibiotics. But hepatitis is a viral infection, meaning antibiotics won’t work against it. In some cases, Stolp said, interferon — a product of the human immune system that activates white blood cells — can be injected to hepatitis C patients to kill the virus.

But in most cases — about 80 percent — those who contract hepatitis C will develop the chronic form of the disease, according to Stolp. The acute stage, usually followed by a drawn-out asymptomatic stage, consists of the gradual failure of the infected person’s liver. Hepatitis C is the most dangerous of the hepatitis viruses.

A recent study the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in four women between the ages of 14 and 19 in the United States is infected with at least one STD.