According to findings, the UConn Health researchers have identified exterior proteins on the bacteria that could serve as vaccine targets for syphilis disease. Although, Syphilis is hard to study because, unlike many disease causing bacteria, it cannot be grown in a laboratory dish or in mice.
Besides humans, the only animal commonly found in laboratories that is susceptible to syphilis is the rabbit.
But rabbits clear syphilis infections quickly, so the researchers
plan to regularly infect new rabbits to maintain a strain of Treponema
pallidum, the syphilis-causing bacteria to pave the way for achieving
the vaccine. The study is published in the 12 June issue of ‘mBio,’ a
bimonthly peer-reviewed open access scientific journal published by the
American Society for Microbiology in association with the American
Academy of Microbiology.
UConn Health is a renowned biomedical research centre, specialising
in genetics, ageing, orthopaedics and neurology at the University of
Connecticut School of Medicine.
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease (STD) that can have very
serious complications when left untreated, but it is simple to cure with
the right treatment and symptoms of secondary syphilis include skin
rash, swollen lymph nodes, and fever. Spread by sexual contact, syphilis
disease starts as a painless sore — typically on the genitals, rectum
or mouth. Similarly, it spreads from person to person via skin or mucous
membrane contact with these sores. In spite of global efforts to
eradicate it, syphilis is on the ris
Although, until now, most health agencies focused on treating infected people and their sex partners, which has so far limited that approach considering that many partners do not turn up for treatment, thereby jeopardising the efforts to reduce syphilis spread. However, the new discoveries may produce a vaccine that could tackle the disease, is widely seen as an effort in the right direction.
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