Syphilis

Abstract

Syphilis or, more properly venereal syphilis is a chronic comunicable disease, which, until the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome emerged in the early 1980s, was the most serious and dreaded of the so-called sexually transmitted disease (VD). Although syphylis is transferred predominantly by sexual contact, it may also be transmitted in nonsexual ways, such as by close contact with either an open lesion of early syphilis or infected fomites, by infection of an unborn infant in utero, and by transfusions of infected blood.