CDC Will Recommend an Antibiotic After Sex to Help Prevent Sexually Transmitted Infections

MONDAY, Oct. 2, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is poised to recommend use of a powerful antibiotic to prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs). On Monday, the CDC issued draft recommendations, recommending doctors consider prescribing doxycycline to help prevent the spread of disease.

Dubbed Doxy-PEP -- short for doxycycline postexposure -- the approach calls for taking the antibiotic after a potential STI exposure rather than waiting until after a disease is diagnosed. If the draft recommendation is adopted, Doxy-PEP would be recommended for gay and bisexual men; other men who have sex with men; and transgender women who have been diagnosed with at least one STI caused by bacteria in the past year. Those infections include gonorrhea, chlamydia, or syphilis.

The CDC is expected to advise doctors that prescribing a 200-mg dose of doxycycline "should be considered" for these patients within 72 hours after oral, vaginal, or anal sex. The agency needs more data before recommending it for other groups.

The CDC is not the first to back this strategy. Health departments in California, Michigan, and New Mexico, among other agencies, already have guidance on Doxy-PEP.

David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors, hailed the proposed recommendation. "There is not a lot of money in STI care, prevention, and research," Harvey told CBS News. "So this development is profound for our field. And the community has already been working hard to implement Doxy-PEP and clinicians in some public health clinics are prescribing this widely."

As part of the CDC draft recommendation, there is a request for doctors to assess side effects of Doxy-PEP and to screen every three to six months for breakthrough infections. "Larger evaluations can sometimes show negative outcomes that have been missed in smaller randomized trials," Jonathan Mermin, M.D., head of the CDC National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, said in an interview with CBS News. "So we are going to be continuing to monitor and evaluate the implementation of Doxy-PEP over time."

The CDC is taking comments for 45 days on the recommendations through Nov. 16. A final version will likely be published early next year.

CBS News Article