Since the 15th century, the organism that causes syphilis, Treponema pallidum, has been responsible for producing vast amounts of human misery by being a major cause of blindness, heart disease, insanity and even death. But since the discovery of antibiotics, syphilis infections can be cured with a simple injection of penicillin. We had it so well in control in the 1950′s it was thought to have been eradicated from the US.
However, syphilis appears not only to have made a comeback, but appears to be quickly gaining ground. The CDC reported an 11.8% increase in cases from 2005 to 2006. In November of 2009, there was a report out that the infection rate for North Carolina had DOUBLED for syphilis infections from the previous year.
A new report out by the New England Journal of Medicine (via the BBC) is stating that a similar trend is occurring now in China. Having been almost eradicated in the 1950′s, the report states that currently 20 people in every 100.000 people carry the disease. So, let’s see…China has a population of 1.3 billion people (as of 2008) . That would make over 260,000 people infected with the organism. But what is especially distressing the rate of congenital syphilis (infection of the newborn):
Pregnant women are also increasingly passing the disease to their children, with more than one baby with congenital syphilis born every hour in 2008.
EVERY HOUR. Since 2008, that means over 12,000 babies have been born with the disease. Symptoms of congenital syphilis are:
deformities, neurological problems, stillbirths or death in early infancy
And (as always in this blog) we are also going to talk about antibiotic resistance. Syphilis is becoming increasingly resistant to treatment with azithromycin. However, it is interesting that it is not yet resistant to treatment with penicillin. However, could that be on the way? According to one report it would only take a mutation in one enzyme necessary for cell wall synthesis (a penicillin binding protein) for the organism to become resistant to that as well.
It is a scary monster indeed.