Return of the Spirochete

“Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.”
– Edmund Burke

Syphilis has been around at least since Europeans arrived in the Western Hemisphere. It’s a sexually transmitted disease caused by Treponema pallidum, a member of a group of corkscrew-shaped bacteria called spirochetes. Sometimes it causes no symptoms at all, but typically it initially causes a painless sore on the mouth or genitals. Later it can cause a rash. Untreated it may lead to blindness, spinal cord and brain damage, and death.

After the discovery of penicillin in the 1940s syphilis was for the first time easily curable and the prevalence of syphilis in the US dropped precipitously.

I trained in the bad-old-days of the mid-90s when HIV was killing tens of thousands of people in the US every year. On every inpatient ward rotation I met patients hospitalized with an opportunistic AIDS-related infection. On every ICU rotation I met patients dying of AIDS. Back then medications to treat HIV were few, new, and only modestly effective. HIV was usually a rapidly fatal disease. It was scary. Counseling patients about condom use and monogamy was not moralistic or theoretical. It had all the practical urgency of yelling at someone to get off the train tracks.

I have no evidence that HIV and the response to it was responsible for the subsequent fall in syphilis infections, but in fact syphilis did decline during the 90s and in 2000 reached its lowest rate ever in the US and was on the verge of being eliminated. You would think that a disease that can be easily diagnosed with blood tests, can be cured with antibiotics, and can be prevented with condoms would be on its way to the dustbin of history. You would be wrong.

This week the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published ” target=”_blank”>US Syphilis Rate Up; Mostly Gay And Bisexual Men (NPR)
” target=”_blank”>CDC Reports Syphilis is Increasing in Homosexual and Bisexual Men (Science World Report)
” target=”_blank”>Primary and Secondary Syphilis — United States, 2005–2013 (CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report)
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