If you fist bump a friend, you’re at the Inauguration.
If you fist a friend, you’re at Mid-Atlantic Leather.

The number of syphilis infections in Victoria jumped from a single case in 2001 to nearly 1000 in the past two years, according to the Department of Human Services.

Melbourne Sexual Health Centre clinical Associate Professor Marcus Chen said the outbreak in Victoria had so far been detected only in gay men and mirrored a worldwide trend.

“It’s part of an international phenomenon,” he said.

“For decades after World War II in most industrial countries syphilis became very well-controlled and so became a relatively uncommon condition.

“But in the early 2000s a marked increase, specifically among men who have sex with men, emerged in quite a number of industrial countries in Europe and North America.”

A new finger prick blood test, similar to the way diabetes is detected, was today launched in a bid to stem the rapid rise of syphilis.

The on-the spot test takes 15 minutes to produce a result and is hoped to lead to an increased detection of the disease that is treated with penicillin but if left undiagnosed can lead to brain and heart infections.

“What’s quite disturbing about syphilis is a high proportion of cases are asymptomatic, in other words, when someone’s infected they actually don’t know so if you don’t test you won’t detect .. but if you do detect it’s completely curable,” Associate Professor Chen said.

Fears over rise of syphilis | theage.com.au

How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls and a radio:

Boston.com – Ideas – Globe

The study supports the theory that sleep is important to immune function, said Sheldon Cohen and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Volunteers who spent less time in bed, or who spent their time in bed tossing and turning instead of snoozing, were much more likely to catch a cold when viruses were dripped into their noses, they found.

People who slept longer and more soundly resisted infection better, they reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Sleepless nights equal more colds in U.S. study | Reuters

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis linked to SanFran’s Castro bars:

San Francisco health officials have traced several cases of tuberculosis to patrons of Castro gay bars, with one of the people infected a bartender in the area. The discovery has prompted them to ask 140 employees of businesses in the gay neighborhood who may have been exposed to an active case of TB to get screened for the potentially deadly disease…

According to a fact sheet handed out to bar owners, obtained by the Bay Area Reporter, the health department is concerned that the “cluster of highly infectious TB cases” may be “working its way through the SF gay community…”

“You don’t get it from sex or sharing food or beer bottles. It is spread by someone who has it in their lungs who either sneezes or coughs,” explained Kawamura (Dr. Masae Kawamura, director of the health department’s tuberculosis control section). “Bars are notorious sites of transmission. There is a higher risk of breathing in contaminated air.”

The Bay Area Reporter Online | TB cases linked to Castro bars

Image by Flickr user mjagbayani

Hospitals should provide workers with clean uniforms and prohibit wearing them in public.

Opinion: Germs on Hospital Scrubs – WSJ.com