History and Impact of STIs

A **sexually transmitted infection (STI)** means infection with a disease agent through sexual contact.

Any contagious disease may be transmitted between sex partners, of course, but the term STI

is reserved for those conditions for which sexual contact is the main route,

or one of the main routes, by which they spread from person to person. Until a generation

or so ago, STIs were called **venereal diseases**, after Venus, the Roman goddess

of love. The archetypal venereal disease was **syphilis**. The first European cases of this disease

were described in the mid-1490s, a year or two after Christopher Columbus returned from the

New World. It is likely that Columbus or his sailors brought the disease from