Congenital syphilis: the silence of an epidemic

Abstract

With the importance that it acquired the global fight against human immunodeficiency virus, congenital syphilis (CS) it has remained a silent epidemic that has seen increasing mortality and morbidity indicators fetal / neonatal. Epidemiologically the highest rates of CS are in countries where the health system is not the most suitable for the care of the mother and child so that it talks to the CS rate is a negative indicator of health systems. Some conditions, such as the difficulty of diagnosis and changes of criteria for its determination, not allowed to have reliable information about its impact, although it is clear that third world countries even more from sub-Saharan Africa are most affected by this. The SC can appear in fetal death and spontaneous abortion after the first trimester of pregnancy, or stillbirth by 30 to 40%, or can culminate in the birth of a premature infant with obvious clinical signs of infection, or birth completely asymptomatic. Its clinical presentation will depend on the degree of organ involvement by the immune response to Treponema from the fetal stage. The therapy of choice is penicillin, but the best way to eliminate is the diagnosis and treatment of maternal syphilis during pregnancy.