AN INTRODUCTION TO SYPHILIS

Cause

Treponema pallidum, a kind of bacteria.

Incubation period

One week to three months; on average, it's three weeks before you see any symptoms.

Transmission

Of course, you can get it through penetrative sex (insertive or receptive anal, oral, and vaginal sex). You used to be able to get it from getting a blood transfusion, but the blood supply is cleaner nowadays. You can get syphilis from other types of intimate skin contact, too. Mothers can pass it on to their children during childbirth. Kissing, dry humping, petting, and foreplay involve intimate contact. It's very unlikely that you will get syphilis from secondary contact (like from touching something that a person with syphilis touched), but it is a possibility.

Also, it's possible to get syphilis from someone who doesn't have any sores if they've had it for a long time and never got it treated.

What to look for

There are three stages of syphilis. First, a big, open sore called a chancre forms. It is painless, and forms exactly at the point where you had first had contact with the syphilis bacteria.

In men, chancres can be found on anywhere on the penis, inside the piss hole or on the scrotum (balls). In women, chancres can be found on the outside of the vagina, inside the vagina, on the cervix, and inside the urethra (where the urine comes out).

On both men and women, chancres can be found on the lips, tongue, and anywhere inside the mouth. It can also be found on the eyelids, face, chest, fingers, breasts, anus, and on the perineum.

Chancres only last a couple weeks, but the disease continues to inhabit your body.

Treatment

Syphilis is easily and completely curable with antibiotics. The first step is to recognize that you have it-- the sores are easy to identify. However, if the sores are in a spot that's hard to see (inside the anus, or in the throat), then you might not ever know.

Contact your health provider as soon as you think you may have gotten an STD; the sooner you are treated, the better your chances of recovery, and it is less likely you will get complications. Also, have your partners checked out, and stop having sex until you get better. Otherwise, you and your partners could keep passing the disease back and forth to each other.

Complications

As said before, the syphilis bacteria continues to live in your body even after the first wave of chancres is over. People often don't even know they've had the first stage. Within six months, you get more sores all over your body, like measles. You feel sick like you have the flu; you have a fever, a skin rash everywhere, swollen glands, spots on the tongue, and warty bumps on the genitals. This can last for a year. Then, these symptoms disappear until the last stage. The chancre disappears after about two weeks.

In the last stage, the syphilis causes gross malformations by eating away at skin and bones all over your body. It can cause blindness, heart disease, and brain damage, too. It is rarely seen in the United States anymore. In this stage, the disease cannot be passed to others.

Because women can pass it on to their babies at birth, children are at high risk for malformations early on. You can treat the syphilis, but the malformations stay for life. So it's very important to get prenatal care if you're pregnant.

Having an open sore makes it easier for secondary or opportunistic infections to happen. This is especially true for HIV, which can easily get into your body if your skin is broken. Also, if you have HIV and an open syphilis sore, then you are more likely to transmit HIV to another person.