19/06/2025
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Syphilis is on the rise again, Rachel E. Gross wrote in 2024—in a new, dangerous way. https://theatln.tc/lFQOY2xP
The disease usually has a series of stages. It “shows up first as a firm, painless sore on the ge****ls or inside the mouth or a**s, then as a rash,” Gross continues. If caught in these stages, the cure is a shot of penicillin. When left untreated, syphilis can reach the brain, nerves, or the eyes. But now, eye symptoms are showing up seemingly all by themselves.
When eye-syphilis symptoms are the only noticeable sign of the disease, “by the time people do get correctly diagnosed, their vision might be permanently damaged,” Gross writes. Peter Leone, an infectious-disease physician, “is haunted by a patient who came into his hospital in 2015. The 33-year-old man had been experiencing blurred vision, light sensitivity, and ringing in his ears for weeks, but was misdiagnosed with a sinus issue … By the time Leone saw him two weeks later, the man could barely count the fingers on a hand held directly in front of his face. Leone immediately began treating him for syphilis, but he never regained his vision.”
“Eye syphilis ‘was a rare event before, and there seems to be a resurgence,’” Leone told Gross. “Sexually transmitted infections of all kinds are increasing worldwide, thanks to a long-standing lack of access to testing and treatment, increasing drug use, and falling condom use,” Gross writes. But syphilis is gaining ground with particular speed in the U.S., and although experts aren’t entirely sure why, one reason could be how highly stigmatized the disease is. Male patients “tell their mom about their HIV but they don’t tell their mom about their syphilis,” Christina Marra, a neurosyphilis expert, told Gross.
Some of the recent eye-syphilis cases might suggest a new eye-loving strain of the disease, but others are more worried about the fact that the disease is rising in new populations—heterosexual men and even pregnant women, for example. “We’ve known the cure for syphilis since 1943,” Leone says. “The true horror is that the U.S. has allowed this ancient scourge to gain a foothold once again.”
🎨: Matteo Giuseppe Pani. Source: Getty.
