Professor Dave again, let’s learn about syphilis.
Syphilis has been around for a long time.
Though there’s some debate regarding where and when it first appeared, historians can
at least agree that the first well-documented outbreak of syphilis occurred in Italy in 1495.
Back then, we didn’t have antibiotics, or any effective treatment, for that matter.
Before penicillin was discovered, the painful symptoms of syphilis, including genital sores,
abscesses and ulcers all over the body, and severe pains, were treated with mercury or
other mostly ineffective home remedies.
This meant that on top of the painful symptoms, many patients died of mercury poisoning.
Let’s learn a bit more about this disease and its modern treatment now.
First let’s talk about what syphilis actually is, it is a bacterial infection caused by
Treponema pallidum that’s spread most commonly through sexual contact, but it can also be
passed from a pregnant woman to her baby.
These bacteria are thin, tightly coiled spirochetes, which are gram-negative, motile, spiral bacteria.
They have pointed, straight ends with flagellae on each end, which allow them to move around.
These organisms are difficult to grow in the lab and too thin to observe with a light microscope,
so scientists have analyzed their genome to figure out what types of proteins or virulence
factors they may use to cause damage.
While scientists have identified a few proteins that are associated with virulence, precisely
how these proteins are involved remains to be determined.
Ultimately, the tissue destruction and lesions observed in syphilis cases are caused by a
patient’s immune response to infection.
The disease follows a progression of stages that can last for weeks, months, or even years.
The initial or primary phase is characterized by one or more skin lesions called chancres,
which mark where the bacteria entered the body.
These chancres are painless and might occur in locations you don’t regularly examine,
and hence might not notice, and then heal within three to six weeks even without treatment.
However, without adequate treatment, the infection will progress to the secondary stage.
In the secondary phase, the bacteria have spread through the blood, causing prominent
skin lesions or rashes over the entire surface of the body.
In some cases, these rashes are so faint that they’re not noticeable, but in others, large,
raised gray or white lesions may form.
In some patients, the infection may cause a sore throat, swollen lymph glands, fever,
weight loss, or fatigue.
If the disease isn’t treated in the secondary stage, it will progress to the latent phase
of the disease, in which there are no visible symptoms at all, which can last for years.
In rare cases, tertiary syphilis can develop 10-30 years after the initial infection, affecting
multiple organ systems.
This can be fatal.
At any of the above stages, syphilis can infect the nervous system or eyes, causing a wide
range of potentially serious symptoms.
In infected pregnant women, untreated syphilis can cause infant death in up to 40% of cases.
For the babies that survive, they’re at risk of seizures, developmental delays, or
death, if they aren’t treated.
Despite its long history, syphilis is quite ommon.
The World Health Organization estimates that there were 18 million syphilis cases worldwide
in 2012, with 5.6 million new cases occurring in adults between the ages of 15 and 49.
In the U.S. alone, CDC estimates there were over 115,000 new cases of syphilis in 2018.
Syphilis is typically diagnosed using blood tests and treated with penicillin or other
antibiotics.
Any sexually active person can get syphilis through unprotected sex, so health care providers
recommend using condoms and getting regularly tested for STDs.
However, since the bacteria are extremely labile and unable to survive exposure to drying
or disinfectants, syphilis cannot be spread through contact with inanimate objects like toilet seats.