THE EFFECT OF VIVAX MALARIA ON SPINAL FLUID AND BLOOD SEROLOGIC TEST FOR SYPHILIS

Abstract

It has been known for many years that infectious diseases such as malaria, yaws, upper respiratory infections and leprosy are productive of biologic false positive serologic tests for syphilis. It is our purpose in this study to determine the effect of vivax malaria on the spinal fluid and blood serologic reactions. Various investigators have reported on the incidence of false positive reactions in the blood of malarial patients. Fellows 1 stated that in 3,244 cases there was an incidence of 9.9 per cent positive serologic tests for syphilis but in only 3.1 per cent were malarial parasites demonstrated, and when parasites were discovered there was a disagreement between the first and second blood tests in 64.8 per cent of the cases. Burney, Mays and Iskrant, 2 working with inoculated malaria in nonsyphilitic patients, found that all cases gave a false positive serologic test for syphilis at some time during the