Worldwide, syphilis is on the rise, which is a particular wellness concern for people who live in areas where access to healthcare is limited. For these people, reliable and rapid screening is an urgent and crucial need, and so an international research team, led by scientists at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) in Montreal, has demonstrated that rapid and point-of-care tests (POC) for syphilis are as accurate as conventional laboratory tests.
According to the study, which was published in PLoS ONE, there needs to be a major change in approach to syphilis testing, and POC tests should replace first line laboratory tests, especially in settings where resources are limited. Conventional laboratory-based tests can take up to three weeks to deliver results, and require chemical agents, trained staff and a continuous supply of electricity. Rapid and POC tests, on the other hand, can improve the wellbeing of people who live in areas where these resources are scarce, as they can be performed on a simple finger stick, and the results can be communicated to the patient within 20 minutes.
Dr Nitika Pant Pai, the study’s senior and corresponding author, clinical researcher at the RI-MUHC and assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at McGill University, argues, ‘There is a need to embrace rapid and POC tests for syphilis in global settings. This meta-analysis generates global evidence across all populations for POC tests for syphilis and is the first to use sophisticated analyses to explore the accuracy of POC tests compared to the best reference standards.’
As well as being transferred by sexual partners, syphilis can be transmitted from mother to foetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis. Yalda Jafari, the study’s first author and a former master’s student of Dr Pant Pai, explains, ‘timely screening and treatment in first trimester is extremely important for pregnant women to prevent still births, pre-term births and mother-to-child transmission of syphilis.’
Approximately 90% of those infected do not know it, and this is the driving force behind the worldwide epidemic. Dr Pant Pai concluded, ‘Our study has major worldwide implications for populations living in rural areas with limited access to healthcare. These tests offer the potential to expedite first line screening in settings where people have no access to a primary care physician or where laboratories take more than a week to deliver results.’
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