Syphilis

[NewYorkKat]

A friend needs help. He's Poz for 10 years and recently tested positive for syphilis. I told since it was detected early, he should get the penicillin shot and he's good. Is this true? Should a poz person work about syphilis even if they get the shot and are cured?

[mecch]

What is your question? Should someone cured of a curable disease, like syphilis is, go to work??  Are you serious?
What help does your friend need from you? If your friend has syphilis, he/she can go to a DOCTOR, get proper treatment, and A DOCTOR can decide if there are any work limitations.  Right?
Maybe its a typo. You mean, should a poz person WORRY about it, afterwards?  I bet that's it.  Damnned spell check, too... 

Worry - well the doctors need to treat and make sure its cured, yep....   

We all have to worry about getting syphilis and get regular tests, etc, if there are risks in our lives...

[Matty the Damned]

A friend needs help. He's Poz for 10 years and recently tested positive for syphilis. I told since it was detected early, he should get the penicillin shot and he's good. Is this true? Should a poz person work about syphilis even if they get the shot and are cured?

In an HIV positive person syphilis requires more than a penicillin shot. It requires specialist treatment by an appropriately qualified physician.

Your friend should contact his nearest sexual health or infectious diseases clinic.

The gold standard for syphilis treatment these days is benzyl-penicillin (often called Bi-Cillin LA), though procaine penicillin can also be used. The latter requires at least 10 painful injections over as many days and is deprecated in the developed world.

In HIV positive people these treatment courses are often extended beyond the standard. Your friend should also be scheduled for a lumbar puncture as our kind is especially prone to atypical neuro-syphilis.

Determining the effectiveness of the treatment involves specific blood tests taken over some months which can be complicated to read and as such many general practitioners and other inexperienced medical types misinterpret them leading to inadequate or excessive treatment.

I'm sure AIDSmeds has a lesson on this and I recommend you review it.

MtD

[pittman]

Matty,

So is that true based just on being HIV+ or is it more related to your CD4 count or lowest count, etc?  Just trying to understand what would make that true for controlled HIV.

[Rhaegar]

Treatment is based more on what stage someone might be in, in terms of syphilis.  If there's a documented negative result within the last year, it would only require one round of Bicillin (or BICx1).  If unsure of how long someone has had it, generally the recommendation is 3 rounds of Bicillin (BICx3).

The success or failure of treatment really depends on the follow-up syphilis testing.