Syphilis - Still Untamed After A Hundred Years
Elizabeth Campbell
You may know that syphilis is a disease, which can be transmitted by sexual contact in almost all cases. It is an infectious disease, contagious, whose evolution is chronic, intermittent. It is transmitted through genital contact, very rarely via other means and it can affect any tissue or organ.
The stage where the spirochete starts to invade the body is called primary syphilis. It starts where the infectious lesion had a direct contact, most likely in the penis, the labia and the uterine cervix. It can be observed from the medical history that first contact with an infected person would have been a week to 2 months ago. The characteristic lesion is typified by a chancre, the point of first exposure.
The development period takes about 21 days on the average and depends on varying factors. The lesion starts with minor corrosion, which immediately develops into a skin level, painless wound. It normally comes with enlargement of the isolated, mobile and painless ganglions in some areas.
In secondary syphilis, the infection starts to spread. It begins from 7-10 weeks after the first exposure and at 2-3 weeks from the appearance of the signs of primary syphilis. Microbes move from the ganglions where their numbers have greatly multiplied. A second incubation ensues until the appearance of first skin ulcerations which happens 45 days from appearance of first symptoms and 60-70 days after first exposure.
It is sometimes accompanied by fever. Almost any tissue of the body can be accidentally caught and hurt. However, the most frequent will be the lesions of the teguments and mucous membranes. Lesions on teguments are pustules like elements even if the most frequent rash looks like viral skin disease.
Syphilis will repeatedly occur if not properly detected and treated. The infection will unfavourably progress to secondary syphilis from 3 to 9 months after being treated. Serologic relapses are happening but will not give out any clinical indications. If ever, skin and mucous membrane lesions will develop, bones will be affected, sore eyes will develop and neurological and visceral symptoms will appear.
Latent syphilis represents a calm stage from clinical point of view, between secondary lesions resorption and tertiary symptoms emergence.
At this stage, proof of infection has been clearly diagnosed from the blood tests; the LCR exam is negative; radiological exams and ECG will reveal cardiovascular damage.
The third stage of the infection or tertiary syphilis can emerge even after years of latency. At the late latency stage, lesions might appear perhaps as an allergic reaction of the tissue to Treponema Palladium, affecting tissues of the skin and the mucous membranes. Small lesions can develop and become nodules. The mucous membranes can also develop tubercles and lesions.
An infected mother can pass on the infection to her baby through the fetus placenta flow, thus the baby will be born with congenital syphilis. The father cannot transmit it to the baby if the mother is not infected.
If the baby has the precocious congenital syphilis type, it will develop symptoms as soon as the baby is born or two years after. Blisters and sometimes ulcerations will be the indications.
Late congenital syphilis occurs after the age of two and the lesions are associated to the third stage of disease.
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