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The scary thing about STDs is that a person can have one and not know it, viruses and bacteria, sexually transmitted diseases that many men carry, often with no symptoms.
"When you're sleeping with someone, you're really sleeping with everybody they have slept with." Dr. Thomas Slama, an infectious disease clinician with St. Vincent Hospital, says STD testing is not routine when a man goes in for a physical, but his doctor should ask questions. "Have you been sexually active? Is there anything you want to tell me about that you should worry about? Are you having any burning, itching, blood in your urine? Noticed any lumps or bumps in your testicles?"
One in five Americans has herpes. In men, the diagnosis is usually made visually. A doctor may see a small cluster of blisters. But a man could also carry the virus in his urethra with no visible symptoms.
How do doctors check? Dr. Slama says, "A cystoscope is a small, thin scope that's passed into the urethra by a urologist. (It) has a light on it with a scope at the end that they can see and as it passes through and into the bladder."
This device can help doctors check for gonorrhea and chlamydia in men. "You would swab the specimen, take it off and implant it into the growth media. Then this would be sent up to a lab, where it would be plated, cultured, and examined."
Chlamydia is a bacteria. About 50% of men with the disease have no symptoms. Those that do have a clear discharge. And if left untreated "It doesn't have any increased risk of forming cancer, but it can progress and get into the prostate and be the cause of chronic prostatitis and form prostate abcess disease."
HPV, or human papilloma virus, is one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases. It's characterized by genital warts, some visible, some not.
Dr. Ken Fife of the Indiana University School of Medicine tells Eyewitness News that "There’s reason to think that we don't really get rid of the virus altogether, but at least we are able to control it most of the time."
Dr. Fife is helping to develop a test for the DNA of the papilloma virus, which could be ready within two years. The test detects HPV and can tell doctors whether the virus comes and goes or stays for good. "We can take a sample from an individual and run it through a procedure that amplifies the amount of papilloma virus DNA in it and expose that to these strips. And where you see a dark line, corresponds to where there's one papilloma virus represented."
Left untreated, HPV can cause penile cancer in men, but it's very rare.
Although the threat of STDs is a very real problem, researchers say it's not practical or cost-effective to test everyone.
And Dr. Slama adds that practicing safe sex is no guarantee. "If he wears a condom, does that mean he's 100% protected? I don't think so. Does it reduce the risk? Certainly."
What can we expect for the future of STD detection and treatment? There's actually a new blood test available now for the detection of herpes, although it's not widely used.
The IU School of Medicine received a $2.2 million grant from the government to help researchers reduce the escalating rate of herpes.
And you may see newer STD tests down the line to detect several diseases, even take-home tests for women that can help detect HPV.
