Rates of congenital syphilis are skyrocketing in the US. Here’s why
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- 02 Mar 2023
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Venus Johnson entered the world clinging to life. She stopped breathing shortly after delivery, and doctors massaged her tiny chest and held her upside down to clear her lungs of thick mucus, the result of an infection she caught in the womb: congenital syphilis.
“She’s a fighter. That’s what saved her, I think,” said her grandmother, Danae Johnson.
Venus was whisked off to the neonatal intensive care unit, where she was intubated and treated with round-the-clock infusions of an intravenous antibiotic for the next 10 days.
“There wasn’t a lot of holding her or touching her,” Johnson said.
Danae Johnson's granddaughter, Venus, was treated in the neonatal intensive care unit.
Courtesy Danae Johnson
Now a feisty, taco-loving 18-month-old, Venus has recovered from the initial infection, but doctors told her grandmother that she would probably have lifelong consequences from it. She has signs of a latent infection and must be checked once a year to make sure it hasn’t returned.
Left untreated, syphilis can lead to stillbirth. It may damage a baby’s organs and bones or harm vision and hearing. In 2021, more than 200 infants in the US with congenital syphilis died.
Venus’ case is part of an unsettling trend: Rates of syphilis in babies are rising at an alarming rate in the United States.
Syphilis, ‘the great pretender’
Syphilis is a bacterial infection that is typically spread by sexual contact. It begins with a painless sore called a chancre. These often arise on the genitals or mouth. The disease spreads from person to person through direct contact with these sores.
People can have symptoms 10 to 90 days after infection. Syphilis is sometimes called the great pretender because its symptoms can mimic those of many other diseases: fever, sore throat, swollen lymph nodes, hair loss and fatigue.
Without treatment, the infection progresses through a series of stages. It can lie dormant in the body for years or even decades, returning with a vengeance in its later stages to attack the brain, nerves, eyes and other organs. It can lead to deafness, blindness or death.
In addition to passing the infection through skin sores, people who are pregnant can pass the infection to a developing baby in the womb. When a baby becomes infected before birth, this is known as congenital syphilis.
Public health experts consider congenital syphilis to be a “never event” – something that should never happen – because nearly every case is preventable. Read More…
