How Good Is Your Rule of Thumb? Validating Male-to-Female Case Ratio as a Proxy for Men Who Have Sex With Men Involvement in N. gonorrhoeae Incidence at the County Level.

Background: Lacking information on men who have sex with men (MSM) for most reported cases, sexually transmitted disease (STD) programs in the United States have used crude measures such as male-to-female case ratios (MFCR) as a rule of thumb to gauge MSM involvement at the local level, primarily with respect to syphilis cases in the past. Suitability of this measure for gonorrhea incidence has not previously been investigated.

Methods: A random sample of gonorrhea cases reported from January 2010 through June 2013 were interviewed in selected counties participating in the STD Surveillance Network to obtain gender of sex partners and history of transactional sex.

Analysis of human soft palate morphogenesis supports regional regulation of palatal fusion.

It is essential to complete palate closure at the correct time during fetal development, otherwise a serious malformation, cleft palate, will ensue. The steps in palate formation in humans take place between the 7th and 12th week and consist of outgrowth of palatal shelves from the paired maxillary prominences, reorientation of the shelves from vertical to horizontal, apposition of the medial surfaces, formation of a bilayered seam, degradation of the seam and bridging of mesenchyme. However, in the soft palate, the mechanism of closure is unclear.

HIV testing among patients infected with Neisseria gonorrhoeae: STD Surveillance Network, United States, 2009-2010.

We used data from the STD Surveillance Network to estimate HIV testing among patients being tested or treated for gonorrhea. Of 1,845 gonorrhea-infected patients identified through nationally notifiable disease data, only 51% were tested for HIV when they were tested or treated for gonorrhea. Among the 10 geographic sites in this analysis, the percentage of patients tested for HIV ranged from 22-63% for men and 20-79% for women.