OHIO — Sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise across Ohio, and the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported over 2.5 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in the United States in 2021.

What You Need To Know

  • The CDC is recommending a new antibiotic to treat STDs

  • It would need to be taken within 72 hours of having sexual intercourse

  • The drug is doxycycline, which has been around for years 

  • It's safe to take more than once in your lifetime, but your body could build up resistance

Now, the CDC has recommended a new approach with a drug they’ve been using for years — doxycycline — to help reduce the number of people who get STDs. 

“We’re using an old medicine. It’s been around since the 70s, doxycycline, but it’s being used in a different way. It’s been used for preventing the transmission or acquisition of common bacterial STDs,” Dr. Prakash Ganesh, the medical director for the Cuyahoga County Board of Health, explained.

Doxycycline has been used to treat patients with STDs in the past, but after they already had it. The new antibiotic version, when taking quick enough, could prevent the STD altogether.

“You prescribe it as 200 mg and you take it within 24 hours, but no later than 72 hours, from a condom-less sexual intercourse,” Ganesh said.

Ganesh said you should not take more than one dose of this antibiotic in 24 hours. He also said that it is safe to take more than once in a lifetime, but that your body could build resistance to it.