Dynamics and control of the transmission of gonorrhea.

Calculations revealed that approximately a third of the reported cases of gonorrhea in women during 1973-1975 were discoveries of the screening program. Theoretical models and epidemiologic data showed that the prevalence of gonorrhea adjusts rapidly to changes in social behavior, medical treatment, and control programs, that prevalence oscillates seasonally around an equilibrium state determined by the current social and medical conditions, and that this equilibrium moves as epidemiologic conditions change. The incidence of gonorrhea is theoretically limited by saturation in a sexually active core population, and this core causes gonorrhea to remain endemic.