NIH forces UCSD to cut Tijuana from syphilis study
SkimNews Take
The simultaneous erosion of cross-border surveillance capacity and first-line treatment availability is occurring just as infection rates climb among populations least likely to access care through formal channels.
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- UCSD researchers found 8 of 81 unhoused study participants — roughly 10% — had active syphilis since March, cases that might otherwise have gone undiagnosed and untreated.
- NIH told the UCSD team that international collaboration was "no longer a priority" and would only fund the study if the Tijuana portion of their proposal was removed.
- Intramuscular penicillin was out of stock at the county clinic, forcing study participant GB onto a twice-daily oral antibiotic regimen for 30 days instead of the standard injection.
- Police encampment sweeps routinely destroy participants' belongings, including daily HIV, diabetes and depression medications and overdose-reversing naloxone.
- Planned Parenthood warned earlier this spring of a "silent crisis" of unreported STIs — the same trend UCSD's outreach workers were seeing firsthand.
- Strathdee's earlier research found that even when the US-Mexico border was effectively closed during COVID, HIV continued to circulate between San Diego and Tijuana networks.
Why it matters: With national syphilis data from 2024 nearly two years old and Tijuana surveillance effectively cut by NIH, unhoused patients are essentially invisible to public health. The penicillin shortage makes even confirmed cases hard to cure — a 30-day oral antibiotic regimen is nearly impossible to complete from a tent.
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