Sex is more than just a pleasurable experience, it's an important part of one's mental and physical health. One of the essential elements of maintaining that health is monitoring for sexually transmitted infections (STIs). But the landscape of diseases that most people learned about in sex ed — if they had it at all — is changing, with new conditions emerging without the same level of surveillance for things like gonorrhea and syphilis.
Even with advances in treatment and contraception, Americans have been experiencing a surge in STIs like chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, all three of which saw significant increases between 2020 and 2021, the most recent year data is available. There are also relatively new or rare diseases circulating that some people may not have ever heard of in a sex ed class, such as Mycoplasma genitalium (Mgen for short), Shigella flexneri, Neisseria meningitidis and Lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV). But all of these can cause unpleasant infections spread through sexual activity.
