Researchers use search engines, social media to predict syphilis trends

UCLA-led research finds that internet search terms and tweets related to sexual risk behaviors can predict when and where syphilis trends will occur. Two studies from the UCLA-based University of California Institute for Prediction Technology, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, found an association between certain risk-related terms that Google and Twitter users researched or tweeted about and subsequent syphilis trends that were reported to the CDC. The researchers were able to pinpoint these cases at state or county levels, depending on the platform used.

Syphilis

Author: Dr H. Hunter Handsfield Clinical Professor of Medicine University of Washington 2008-10-20

Treponema pallidum bacteria. Source CDC

Syphilis is one of the five originally recognized venereal diseases, with gonorrhea and the now rare sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) chancroid, lymphogranuloma venereum, and Donovanosis (granuloma inguinale).  The causative organism, which belongs to a class of bacteria called spirochetes, is Treponema pallidum, one of the few important disease-causing organisms that still has not been successfully grown in the laboratory, significantly affecting diagnosis and impeding research.