Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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United Press International; Thursday June 25 9:12 PM EDT
Mara Bovsun in New York City
The researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta say that rates of the disease have steadily declined since 1990 for all racial and ethnic groups.
Rates of syphilis in 1997 were lower than they have been since 1941, with an overall incidence of about 3.2 cases per 100,000, says the CDC. The rates have dropped about 84 percent between 1990 and 1997.
They attribute the drop to an intense public health effort to curb the disease following an outbreak in 1989 and 1990 and HIV prevention efforts, which have had an effect on all sexually transmitted diseases.
They say that the decline in crack cocaine use may also have helped, reducing exposures stemming from the practice of exchanging sex for drugs. Another factor may have been an acquired immunity following the 1990 epidemic.
The study is published in Friday's issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
CDC epidemiologist Lyn Finelli says, "There's a lot of really good news. This has hit the lowest rates since 1941, when reporting began."
She says there was a major epidemic of the disease in 1990, with over 50,000 cases reported. By 1997, the number had dropped to 8,551.
The South had the highest rates, with 6.6 cases per 100,000, and the West had the lowest, with one cases per 100,000.
Nevertheless, the researchers report, rates in the South have declined about 80 percent since 1990.
In 41 states, there were fewer than four cases per 100,000, which is the target for the year 2,000 set by the public health agency.
Blacks are hit hardest with 22 cases per 100,000, compared to 1.6 cases for Hispanics and 0.5 cases for non-Hispanic whites.
About 48 black women out of 100,000 had the disease, and 50 black men, the research says.
Finelli says that it is "unknown why the rate in the black community is so high" but scientists speculate that it may be related to poverty and poor access to health care.
She says there is potential to eliminate domestic transmission of the disease, mainly because the numbers of cases are low and they are concentrated in a few geographic areas.
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