Tertiary syphilis

Nodular tertiary syphilis in an immunocompetent patient*

Acquired syphilis can be divided into primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary stages. About 25% of patients with untreated primary syphilis will develop late signs that generally occur after three to five years, with involvement of several organs. The authors present an immunocompetent female who developed a tertiary stage syphilis presenting with long-standing nodular plaques.

Tertiary Syphilis Presenting as Manic Depressive Psychosis

With the advent of Penicillin, tertiary manifestations of syphilis have become a rarity, while atypical forms are often encountered. Usually the form of neurosyphilis seen by psychiatrists is General Paresis of the Insane (GPI) and Taboparesis. Unlike the grandiose forms seen earlier, the cases of GPI today present with a dementic picture (Dewhurst, 1969; Hahn, 1959). We report a case where Ter...

Non-specific humoural immunity response in latent and tertiary syphilis.

Tertiary syphilis of the lung and its diagnosis.

Acquired syphilis of the lung is a rare condition, but the diagnostic criteria are so variable that it is difficult to assess the degree of rarity. To quote Lord (1925), " the diagnosis cannot be made with assurance during life, and is often uncertain at the post-mortem." Lord himself found no proved cases in the course of 4,705 routine necropsies at the Massachusetts General Hospitai, although...

Acute vertebral collapse and cauda equina compression in tertiary syphilis.

A patient with observed acute collapse of a lumbar vertebral body developed cauda equina compression. He was known to have contracted syphilis some 20 years before and, while he may well have suffered from tabetic spinal neuroarthropathy, histology of the collapsed vertebra showed features which indicate that an intra-osseous gumma could also have been responsible for his vertebral collapse and...