Syphilis is a STD, sexually transmitted disease, that is caused by a bacteria. This is a highly infectious disease that can also be passed through blood transfusion or from the fetus of the mother to the womb where she carries her baby. If left untreated, syphilis can cause serious damage to the brain, nerves, and body tissues. This STD is caused by the bacteria known as Treponema pallidum. The bacteria can enter from the chafed skin or the mucous membranes. Transmission occurs when the person infected with it had sexual intercourse with his partner. Men are more likely to get the STD than women.
People with syphilis do not know that they are already infected. This makes this disease easy to transfer. There are 3 stages of symptom progressions. Sometimes these symptoms are not evident.
Primary stage : In this stage, a sore on the part of the infection becomes noticeable. This sore looks like a craterlike lesion on the male or female genitals, although it can also grow in any part of the body. This sore develops 3-4 weeks after the infection and heals spontaneously after 1 week. Even if the sore is healed, the disease still remains; it then moves to the second stage.
Secondary Stage : This stage usually happens 4-10 weeks after the sore phase. Here, the symptoms start to manifest. However these symptoms are mistakenly identified as symptoms of other diseases that is why syphilis is also known as the great pretender. If during this stage the infection is left untreated, syphilis can progress to the third stage. The most frequently reported symptoms in secondary stage include fever, join pain, muscle pain, sore throat, flulike symptoms, headache, rashes in the whole body, loss of appetite, patchy hair loss and swollen lymph nodes.
Dormant stage : For the first 1-2 years, this is characterized by occasional relapses back to the symptoms of the secondary stage. After 2 years after the start of the latent phase, you can still have no evident symptoms. However, the infection can now be transmitted from mother to fetus or through blood transfusions. In the latent phase of syphilis, the infection can spread in the heart, brain, skin and bones. An expectant mother who has syphilis can infect the baby in her womb. The infection can cause teeth abnormalities, bone problems, brain infection, poor growth, jaundice, low blood counts, liver/spleen/ kidney enlargement and skin rashes.
Considering the health risk posed by syphilis, it is recommended that those people who have active sex life must get themselves tested for STDs. There are STD testing centers that guarantees confidential analysis of your condition. Here, you will not be dealing with doctors. By law, doctors are required to submit reports on your condition.
In STD testing centers, this is being bypassed because you will just submit a blood or urine sample and it will be analyzed by expert technician. Aside from confidentiality reasons, there are other reasons why a visit to STD testing centers is better than going to a doctor. Here you will get faster results, 3 times faster than the results from doctor or clinic. STD testing centers charge 50% less than the cost of doctor visit.
