Treponema is the rod-like bacterium responsible for affecting your wellness with Syphilis. When you have a syphilis sore, any sexual partner who comes into direct contact with it can also contract the disease, and if you’re pregnant, the sore can also affect your baby’s wellbeing during pregnancy or birth, resulting in congenital syphilis. The disease, then, is easily transmitted and quick screening and effective treatment are key to stopping it from spreading.
As it stands, conventional laboratory-based tests are used to screen for syphilis, a disease which, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), infects an estimated 12 million people each year around the globe. However, these screening tests can take up to three weeks to deliver results, and require chemical agents, trained staff and a continuous supply of electricity, which are not readily available in some parts of the world. Approximately 90% of those who have the disease don’t know about it, which is said to be the reason for its high prevalence worldwide, so is there a better way to screen for it?
Unlike conventional methods, rapid and POC tests can be performed on a simple finger stick sample one patient at a time, and the results can be communicated to the patient within 20 minutes. Not only does this save time, but it also helps doctors to order confirmatory tests for those who need it, and quickly flag up those patients. An international team of researchers have come to the conclusion that these tests are the way forwards in syphilis care, and have published a paper in journal PLoS One, urging the medical community to put theory into action, especially in settings where resources are limited.
According to 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, ‘There is a need to embrace rapid and POC tests for syphilis in global settings.’ She continued, ‘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.’ Yalda Jafari, the study’s first author and a former master’s student of Dr Pant Pai, added, ‘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.
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