it is the third most common venereal disease, after chlamydia and gonorrhea. A phenomenon favored by increasingly less safe sexual relationships. In Italy, 1,500 new cases per year
The word evokes evils of other times: la syphilis a sexually transmitted disease which in the past has claimed many excellent victims, from Charles VIII to Paul Gauguin, but disappeared from the radar in recent decades because thanks to the advent of the antibiotic penicillin, very effective in treating it, it was thought to be a problem to be relegated to oblivion or at most limited to low-income countries. Wrong: data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control shows that in recent years there has been an upward trend in the number of patients both in Europe and in Italy.
In our country, over 1,500 new cases are reported per year and an underground workforce is hypothesized to be at least as numerous, confirms Niccol Gori, dermatologist at the Irccs Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Gemelli in Rome and member of the Italian Society of Dermatology and Sexually Transmitted Diseases (SIDeMaST).
Less protection during sexual intercourse
Syphilis is the next most common venereal disease chlamydia and gonorrheawhich have also been growing in the last two decades due to one progressive tendency towards less protection during sexual intercourse. Today there is no longer the great fear of HIV of the 80s because that infection can also be cured and made chronic, so people underestimate the risks of unprotected relationships; more increased use of alcohol and drugs during intercourse self
ssual, the so-called “chemsex”, which reduces the ability to control and can lead to less protection. People with many sexual partners and homosexuals are especially at risk, because the type of intercourse can lead to greater blood loss and encourage contagion. Correct use of condoms would prevent this and other sexually transmitted diseases. The result of the limited use of condoms is a slight but constant increase in syphilis, nine times more frequent among men than women and more common in the age group between 25 and 34 years.
How the disease presents
If primary prevention has failed and the disease is contracted, however, by recognizing it early it can be treated very effectivelyas Gori explains: The classic presentation of primary syphilis, which it appears 10 to 90 days after infection, an ulcer with hard edges, not painfulat the point where you came into contact with the pathogenic agent (the Treponema pallidum bacterium, ed); sometimes the lymph nodes in the area are swollen and in many cases there is spontaneous regression within a few weeks.
There secondary syphilis typically presents with a rash with itchy red spots, malaise, weakness and fever which appear six to eight weeks after infection and can last up to two years, with a chronic-relapsing pattern in which obvious symptoms alternate with periods of well-being. In these first two phases of syphilis, an intravenous penicillin is enough to definitively resolve the problem: syphilis can be cured today, but it must be recognised, underlines the dermatologist.
Sometimes it doesn’t happen because the symptoms don’t appear and the disease remains latent and manifests itself only as tertiary syphilis, which is more serious: concerns 20-30 percent of patients e causes damage to the nervous system, liver, spleen and cardiovascular system with even serious consequences. Sometimes patients don’t pay attention to the signs and symptoms of the first two stages, they don’t think it could be syphilis: Even today, serious cases are not so uncommon because the disease has been neglected and undiagnosed. Doing so is also very important because syphilis is a risk factor for HIV and goes hand in hand with many other sexually transmitted diseases: protecting yourself during sexual intercourse is the best weapon to keep them all away, concludes Gori.
The diatribe on origins
Where did it come from? the French diseaseas syphilis was called in Italy (but in France they called it the Neapolitan disease)? Even today, experts have not agreed on the origin of this disease which was first described by the Venetian military doctor Marcello Cumano in 1495. According to some, the Christopher Columbus hypothesis is true, according to which the bacterium landed in the Old Continent following the navigator’s sailors, others believe it arrived with the African slaves brought by Spanish and Portuguese colonizers. Regardless of the vectors, at the end of the 15th century the disease was already in Europe and after naming it syphilis (this is what Girolamo Fracastoro, a doctor and philosopher friend of Nicolaus Copernicus, called it), its sexual origin was recognized almost immediately: it made us the methods of contrast a mix between very varied medical interventions and laws that tried to prevent its spread by focusing on the sinful nature of evil such as the closure or confinement of brothels in the 16th century.
To find out if it has been contracted, a blood test is enough
To diagnose syphilis all it takes is a blood test in which two specific types of tests are performed which are also useful for distinguishing between the different phases of the disease, which do not always have a standard trend. The andrologist Fabio Leva of the Santagostino Institute in Milan specifies that when you have occasional relationships with different partners it is important to regularly undergo complete screening for sexually transmitted diseases, including syphilis which is also transmitted through oral intercourse which is often not protected.
Syphilis can be easily cured in the first two stages, but n
orThere is no preventative vaccine yet: Its development has so far been hindered by the difficulty of growing the bacterium that causes the disease in vitro, but today some problems have been overcome and also thanks to new technologies it is possible to obtain the complete genome sequence from samples taken from patients, he concludes Lever.
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December 8, 2023 (modified December 8, 2023 | 08:19)
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