Gender-specific syphilis screening strategies in high transmission settings: a mathematical modeling study ofsyphilis in Canadian Artic communities;STI & HIV 2025 World congress, MontrealCanada

Yiqing Xia, Cedric P. Yansouni, Chelsea Caya, Mariana Pico, Jean-Sébastien Touchette, Yassen Tcholakov, Mathieu Maheu-Giroux

At the STI & HIV 2025 World Congress in Montréal, our team shared a poster exploring how different syphilis screening strategies could impact communities in Nunavik, a region in the Canadian Arctic where syphilis rates are 18 times higher than the national average.

Why focus here? Because access to testing is limited, and men in particular are often diagnosed later than women. That gap means they may spread infections longer and sometimes only get treated after their immune response has weakened. This creates unique challenges when designing effective screening programs.

Using a mathematical model built with local surveillance data, we tested what would happen if communities held mass screening events with rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs). We compared gender-specific approaches (screening only men or only women) with universal community-wide screening, and looked at different frequencies (once vs. twice a year).