Ethic statement
All GP practices included in the CPRD require consent
from their patients for their anonymised data to be
included in the data set. This protocol to examine STI
trends in CPRD patients was approved by the Independent
Scientific Advisory Committee of the CPRD. As GUMCAD
and the NCSP are routine public health surveillance activities,
no specific consent was required from those patients
whose pseudoanonymised (age and limited demographic
data without any patient identifiable information) data
were considered in this study. PHE has permission to
handle data obtained from GUMCAD and the NCSP
under section 251 of the UK National Health Service Act
of 2006 (previously section 60 of the Health and Social
Care Act of 2001), which was renewed annually by the
ethics and confidentiality committee of the National
Information Governance Board until 2013. Since then,
the power of approval of public health surveillance activity
has been granted directly to PHE.