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NOTE: A surveillance case definition is a set of uniform criteria used to define a disease for public health surveillance. Surveillance case definitions enable public health officials to classify and count cases consistently across reporting jurisdictions. Surveillance case definitions are not intended to be used by healthcare providers for making a clinical diagnosis or determining how to meet an individual patient’s health needs.

Subtype(s)

  • Syphilis
  • Syphilis, primary
  • Syphilis, secondary
  • Syphilis, early latent
  • Syphilis, late with clinical manifestations (including late benign syphilis and cardiovascular syphilis)
  • Syphilitic stillbirth
  • Syphilis, congenital

Clinical Description

A subcategory of latent syphilis (a stage of infection caused by T. pallidum in which organisms persist in the body of the infected person without causing symptoms or signs) when initial infection has occurred >12 months previously.

Subtype(s) Case Definition

Case Classification

Probable

A person with no clinical signs or symptoms of syphilis who has one of the following:

  • No past diagnosis of syphilis, AND a reactive nontreponemal test (e.g., VDRL, RPR, or equivalent serologic methods), AND a reactive treponemal test (e.g., FTA-ABS, TP-PA, EIA, CIA, or equivalent serologic methods),

OR

  • A past history of syphilis therapy and a current nontreponemal test titer demonstrating fourfold or greater increase from the last nontreponemal test titer.

AND who has no evidence of having acquired the disease within the preceding 12 months (see Syphilis, early latent).
There is no confirmed case classification for early latent syphilis.

Comments

For cases with neurological manifestations, please refer to the Comment field about neurosyphilis at the bottom of this page

Related Case Definition(s)