日本性感染症学会誌 Journal of Japanese Society for Sexually Transmitted Infections

We retrospectively investigated the clinical analysis of trends and diagnosis of 64 patients with active syphilis treated in The Jikei University Katsushika Medical Center from 2012 to 2017.

A total of 43 patients were diagnosed with symptomatic syphilis. When these patients visited our hospital for the first time, more than 50% of them consulted the internal medicine and dermatology department. However, they were assessed by other medical departments due to the complexity of their symptoms. Four cases were difficult to diagnose because of other suspected diseases. Seven cases were diagnosed as early symptomatic syphilis with clinical symptoms and positive treponemal and low nontreponemal test results.

Furthermore, 21 patients were diagnosed with asymptomatic syphilis. The proportion of asymptomatic syphilis was high among men who have experienced sexual intercourse with women and vice versa. Many cases were diagnosed using infectious disease screening performed prior to invasive procedures or upon admission. However, two cases experienced delayed diagnosis due to a lapse in qualitative test results.

Clinicians should conduct the syphilis test and comprehensive judgment of the clinical findings and always perform a quantitative test if the qualitative test is positive.