THURSDAY, June 6, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- Two new blood tests that quickly and accurately determine whether newborn babies have congenital syphilis have been developed by University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center researchers.
The two tests -- immunoglobin M (IgM) immunoblotting and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) -- detected all cases of central nervous system syphilis infection in a group of 148 babies born to syphilis-infected mothers during the 1989-1999 study period.
The results appear in today's New England Journal of Medicine.
Currently, the most accurate lab test to detect syphilis in a newborn requires a three-month incubation period.
A pregnant woman with syphilis has a 60 percent to 80 percent chance of infecting her fetus. Babies born to mothers with syphilis usually have to stay in the hospital for their first 10 days to receive multiple daily injections of penicillin. That's because physical exams and conventional laboratory tests can't detect all syphilis cases in newborns.
"Development of new tests for diagnosis of congenital syphilis and determination of central nervous system infection is vitally important, since many babies infected with syphilis lack clinical and laboratory evidence of infection, and if they are not treated appropriately, may develop complications later in life, usually around puberty," says the study's senior author, Dr. Pablo Sanchez, a pediatrics professor at UT Southwestern.
"Equally important is knowing which baby is unlikely to have central nervous system infection, since this knowledge allows us to treat babies with a single dose of intramuscular penicillin rather than 10 days of intravenous penicillin," Sanchez adds.
"This translates into less medical costs and potential complications since the baby goes home with his mother at 48 hours of age. Ultimately, however, we need to prevent syphilis in babies, and this only will be accomplished by ensuring prenatal care for all women," he says.
More information
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a comprehensive fact sheet on syphilis.
