Syphilis, Lues or solid chancre

Syphilis (also when called Lues or more solidly slim) is a disease spread worldwide, going chronically. She is known already for centuries. Syphilis was brought to Europe in the 15th century, spread rapidly. Since one didn't at the beginning know where it came from, it was described as English, German, French, Russian, Polish or even as a Chinese disease in the different speeches. Since the end of the nineties an increase in the number of new infected has to be watched again.

As a rule, syphilis is transferred by an unprotected sexual intercourse if skin or mucosa hurt with the causative agents, pallidum comes the bacterium Treponema into contact. People with a weakened immune system are particularly at risk. The most effective protection from the infection is the use of condoms. The disease can want to transfer fetus to it as of the fourth pregnancy month indium of. The disease can want to transfer fetus to it as of the fourth pregnancy month in a pregnancy so that it can come to a inborn syphilis or depending on the illness stage of the mother to the malformations or stillbirth. The disease can be transferred to the child also during the birth about the placent.

Symptoms

The disease goes in four stadia, the symptoms are various. First, syphilis manifests itself by skin changes seeming harmless which, however, can affect all organs in the advanced stage and even lead to the death at the end. Infected have to spread the greatest risk, the disease further in the first stage. The risk of infection decreases in the second stage. Are in the third and fourth stage the fallen ill no longer infectious.

Stage I

A solid nodule appears in the first stage of the disease, about two to three weeks after the unprotected sexual intercourse, in the infection place. It develops rapidly into a painless ulcer. This also is named as an ulcus. The nodule can depending on species of the sexual intercourse at men at the penis at the glans penis or appears at the foreskin with women at the small labia or at the os uteri. After an anal traffic they can the anus area both with women and at men or infect the lips as an unpleasant result of an oral traffic at the two sexes. Without medical treatment, after a couple of weeks, the ulcer disappears by itself which, however, doesn't mean that the patient has healed.

Stage II

The causative agents hold forth on the blood into the whole body in the second stage which approximately contains the time period up to two years after the not treated infection of the eighth week. The changes at the skin and on the mucosa are very various. Small reddened firm not itching nodules and pustule can appear also at the lips at the skin at the body, however. Dissolving weeping vesicles form in the skin places with strong sweat formation and at the skinfolds like in the hand and foot insides. These can lightly be mistaken for other exanthemas. Tonsillitis, fevers, lymph nodes which are swollen and hardened (because of which you call) the disease also as a solid chancre at the whole body simultaneously appear. You fade away spontaneously after a couple of months again, however, also can appear in the stage once more. Toward the end of the second stage the patient can feel as healed -- it has no more troubles.

Stage III

The third stage begins only three to five years or even after a decade. The causative agents affect the internal organs and damage the blood vessels, the heart and the brain. These himself can develop at the skin and at the mucosas papulas and nodular granulomas to the ulcers. Nowadays the third stage of the disease no longer frequently appears.

Stage IV

The disease affects the spinal cord, the meninges and the brain in the fourth stage. Pain attacks, paralysis appearances, sensory disturbances and personality changes still arrive.

Diagnosis

The pathogens can be proved most barely with a microscopical examination and in this.

Therapy

The disease is treated depending on stage and phenotype with antibiotics. The prognosis is good at an early recognition of the disease. If the syphilis is treated only in the later stage, the chances of recovery are very unfavorable and the disease can end with the death