Blood and spinal fluid tests for regain after treatment of neurosyphilis.

Abstract

It has long been known that in patients treated for late neurosyphilis blood serum and spinal fluid tests for syphilis continue to give positive results for varying periods after treatment. Yet, many patients are still treated unnecessarily in the hope of reversing such positive reactions. This practice continues because few reports on the long-term follow-up of large series of patients have been published. Physicians are disturbed by the great variety of serologic responses that may be encountered in treated patients, some of whom become seronegative relatively soon while others remain seropositive for years. Even more disconcerting are the great fluctuations in titers obtained in quantitative tests and the great discrepancies in titers obtained by different kinds of tests that occur in some patients and not in others. Such serologic phenomena are not easily interpreted, but, as this report attempts to show, the persistence of reagin in varying amounts following treatment