(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) As the LGBT community celebrates “Pride” month, a new and unique sexually-transmitted disease that results from same-sex contact has appeared in America, NBC News reported.
Calling to mind last year’s outbreak of monkeypox, swine flu and malaria, the sexually transmitted version of ringworm—a fungal infection—is transmitted specifically by gay sex.
The patient contracted the fungus told officials that he had traveled to England, Greece and California, having gay sex with various men all along the way.
When he arrived home, he had developed a red, itchy rash that covered his groin and buttocks, spreading even down his legs. The fungal infection is officially known as Trichophyton mentagrophytes type VII, and has not appeared in the United States until recently. In France, however, 13 cases were reported last year.
The particular patient reportedly took four months to recover.
According to Dr. Avrom Caplan, an assistant professor of dermatology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, while the report should raise concerns among populations having gay sex, the general population need not worry about this specific type of ringworm.
“There’s no evidence that this is widespread, or that this is something that people really need to be worried about,” he said. “But if people are having itchy eruptions in areas like the groin, and it’s not getting better, see a doctor.”
Clinicians and health experts warned that—like bacterial infections—people may become resistant to anti-fungal medications, ultimately meaning that each fungal infection has a greater risk of causing harm.
“We think a lot about antibacterial resistance, but this is a very important time for us to think about anti-fungus resistance,” said Mahmoud Ghannoum, a professor of dermatology at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland.
