Diagnosis of Venereal Syphilis in the African
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
OF MEDICINE No. 5 SEPTEMBER, 1955 ORIGINAL ARTICLES The Art of Diagnosis D. H u n te r.....................................207 Tetanus Neonatorum Treated with Chlorpromazine A/. G elfand.....................................216 Volvulus of the Stomach W. Shepherd Wilson - - - 218 Blackwater Fever in an African Child //. f . T heron................................220 Africa, But Not So Dark jf. Robertson................................ 221 Chemotherapy in Pulmonary Tuberculosis A. I. L. Turnbull - - - - 228 Pulmonary Haemosiderosis J. R. Harries................................235 Impending Coronary Thrombosis A. D iv aris......................................239 The Right Base 7’. Fane Tierney........................... 243 African Vital Statistics J. R. H. Shard ...........................246 The Management of Syphilis R. R. W i l l c o x ...........................250 The Nganga M. G e lf a n d ................................255 EDITORIALS Rugby Football Injuries 259 The Age of Retirement 261 The Quack 262 Correspondence - ------- 2 6 3 Banquet in Honour of Lord Malvern and Professor Drennan - - - 266 Annual Congress of the Medical The Journal Library 264 Association of S. Rhodesia - - 267 PUBLISHED BI-MONTHLY. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION £2 2s. Od. Septembeb, 1955 The Central African Journal of Medicine Truly positive sera usually give a constant pat Management of Syphilis in the tern with increasing positivity, while false European and African positive results tend to be weaker in litre giving BY inconstant results varying not only with each R. R. WILLCOX, m .d., test, but also with successive specimens. St. Mary’s Hospital, London. To-day, new tests, depending not on the reagin antibody of the Wassermann lest, but on other Management of Syphilis in the European antibodies more specific, are coming into use in As in gonorrhoea, the diagnosis of syphilis many parts of the world. These include the should always be confirmed pathologically, Treponemal pallidum immobilisation (TPI) test and various agglutination tests which are under Diagnosis trial. These new tests, or their future succes Primary Syphilis.—All genital sores, whatever sors, depend on specific antibodies and will one their nature, should be examined for T. palli day be most useful in the exclusion of false- dum, no antiseptics being placed on the sore or positive results in Africa. antibiotics administered until the tests have been taken. Treatment of Syphilis in the European Chancroid is common in Africa and may con Early Syphilis (Primary, Secondary and Early fuse the picture. Persons suffering from chan Latent Syphilis) croid, if handled properly, can he finally Penicillin is now the drug of choice for the discharged from observation after a period of treatment of syphilis and for early syphilis, at only three months if syphilis is excluded instead any rate, no adjuvant measures are required. of the years required if syphilis is diagnosed. Neoarsphenamine and bismuth may be entirely If penicillin is given for genital sores without discarded. In-patient treatment is not neces diagnostic tests, cases of genital sore have to sary, the patient being virtually non-infectious be observed for the full time as for syphilis. after 24 hours. When penicillin was first introduced, British The correct regime is to perform a dark-field clinics wen' loth to abandon completely the old examination of mutter from the sore daily for proved long-term arsenic and bismuth schedules three days and serum tests monthly for three and for some time gave, following the intensive months. If these all prove negative, syphilis course of penicillin, one ten-week course of neo can then be excluded. During the time that arsphenamine and bismuth in an attempt at the dark-field examinations are being made the “ consolidation." As the toxic effects of arsenic, sores should be bathed only with normal saline, sometimes serious, occasionally fatal, were still but sulphonamides (e.g.. sulphadiazine in doses encountered, the arsenical course was gradually of 4-5 g. daily for 4-5 days) may be given by dropped, although the bismuth course was re mouth. Sulphonamides have no effect upon T. tained. This too was not without its side-effects, pallidum and will heal most other non-syphilitic and, with cases of stomatitis still occurring, it sores, including chancroid. also came to be omitted. In the belief that Secondary Syphilis.—Patients with secondary there was nothing that bismuth could do that penicillin could not do better, many British syphilis can have their diagnosis confirmed both clinics then employed a method of consolidation by dark-field and serum test. with ten bi-weekly injections of procaine peni Latent Syphilis. -I n cases of suspected latent cillin with aluminium monoslearate in lieu of syphilis, in whom the only sign is a positive bismuth. A recent WHO survey, however, indi serum test, caution is required. Apart from a cates that this practice is mainly confined to greater likelihood of technical difficulties in the Europe, largely in the British Isles, and that over performance of serum tests in the tropics, false 65 per cent, of 277 world clinics now use an positive results may be encountered during or intensive course of penicillin alone without other following malaria, glandular fever, relapsing measures IWillcox. 1954). fever, leprosy, the collagen diseases and small Experimentally it has been shown that a pox vaccination. continuous penicillin serum level for at least 96 When false-positive results are suspected, as hours is the minimum required for the eradica many tests, quantitated if possible, as are avail tion of syphilis, but, for such a serious disease, able should be performed on each specimen and we must allow for a considerable margin of the tests should be repeated a number of times. safety. Page Two Hundred and Fifty September, l95i> T h e Central, A frican TREATMENT Of SYPHILIS Iocrnal or M ed ic in e The earlier penicillin courses, consisting oi positive. The cerebrospinal fluid should be eight daily intramuscular injections of 600,000 examined as to cell count, protein and globulin units of penicillin in oil-beeswax, gave satisfac content, Lange curve and \\ assermann reaction. tory results and a similar dosage has since been Even if available, the new treponemal immo employed using oily injection of procaine benzy- bilisation and agglutination tests are not indi penicillin, viz., procaine penicillin with alu cated at the present time for the routine minium monostearate (PAM), although, with surveillance of treated syphilis, but rather for the this preparation, the interval between injections refutation or otherwise of suspected false-positive can be longer without loss of the continuous reactions. serum level. Late Syphilis It is usual now to recommend an initial load Similar courses of penicillin are the standby ing dose of 2.4 mega units of PAM 1.4 mi. in of treatment in all cases of late and latent syphi each buttock)—-a so-called "epidemiological lis. An X-ray examination of the heart and an dose”-—so that should the patient then detault examination of the cerebrospinal fluid, in addi he already has enough penicillin to give a de tion to the serum test, should be made on all tectable serum level for a week, with a good cases prior to treatment. possibility of a cure even if nothing else is given. This may be followed by 6-8 injections An initial intensive PAM course of 600,000- of 600,000 units daily or of 600,000-900,000 900,000 units daily should be given for 10-14 units every 2-3 days. It is considered by the days and, as no immediate serological response WHO Expert Committee on Venereal Infections may he expected, there is perhaps something and Treponematoses (1954) that at least 2.4 to he said for the British regime of giving a mega units of PAM should be given for primary further 900.00(1 units bi-weekly for five weeks. syphilis and 4.8 mega units for secondary There is a possible danger in the penicillin syphilis. treatment of late syphilis of a Jarisch-Herx- Recently the new diamine penicillins (dibenzy- heinier reaction, especially in neurosyphilis lethylenediamine dipenicillin C iDBED) and when epilepsy, mental changes and focal reac Benethamine penicillin) have been shown dose tions have occasionally been reported. Similarly, for dose to gi\e even more prolonged penicillin in syphilitic aortitis, the possibility that angina serum levels than PAM. With these prepara pectoris or coronary occlusion might be preci tions the initial loading dose of 2.4 mega units pitated by local oedema at the site of the lesions should still be employed, but the subsequent during the first 24-48 hours of therapy cannot injections may be fewer and more widely spaced be dismissed from the mind, even if the total and 0.9-1.2 mega units given weekly for three number of reported cases is few and not all are more weeks may well be amply sufficient. These convincing. penicillins are still on trial, however; moreover, At one time a preliminary course of bismuth they are somewhat more painful than PAM. and iodides was given prior to the penicillin which is well tolerated. High cure rates, as course in an attempt to minimise this risk. To good as those obtained with PAM, have already day it is believed that the Herxheimer reaction been reported in the U.S.A. following; only a is an “all or none” phenomenon and that it single injection of 2.3-2.5 mega units (Smith may occur even with bismuth and iodides, in et al, 1954). which case it is not: to be expected later with Surveillance.--following the treatment of penicillin; if it does not do so, it may then be early syphilis, serum tests should be performed provoked by penicillin even after such pre monthly for six months, quarterly for one year medication. Thus it seems that, in fact, there and six-monthly for a further year, with a is little that can be done to avoid it.