Health, Std | featured news

Early treatment of HIV can result in a functional cure for around 10 percent of patients say French researchers. The conclusion comes from a study of 14 people who were given anti-viral drugs very soon after becoming infected with HIV. Seven years after stopping treatment, the patients still showed no signs of the virus “rebounding”.

The CDC says there is only one good treatment left to ward off the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea. Lab studies are showing an increasing resistance to the type of drugs that doctors use to treat gonorrhea, called cephalosporins. That leaves only a few options, which are not as effective. “Cephalosporin-resistant gonorrhea could potentially mean untreatable gonorrhea,” says Dr. Gail Bolan, director of the Division of STD Prevention at the CDC. “Untreatable gonorrhea is a real possibility.”

HPV is a sexually transmitted disease that is most commonly passed between people during vaginal or anal intercourse. But it can also be transmitted through genital-to-genital, or hand-to-genital contact, which is how the participants in the study likely got the virus, the researchers said. Out of the more than 40 sexually transmitted HPV strains, more than a dozen have been identified as cancer-causing, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Boys ages 11 and 12 years should be routinely vaccinated against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, to protect against anal, mouth and neck cancers that can result from sexual activity, a federal advisory committee said.

"Before you start shooting, you go online to see the other person's test results," Wylde explains. "Or sometimes on set, before you start, they show you the results on paper."