Laboratorial Diagnosis of Syphilis

Syphilis is a curable sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum; the infection can also be passed from mother to her fetus during pregnancy. Diagnosis of syphilis is based on clinical evaluation, detection of the causative organism, and confirmation of the disease by serodiagnosis. T. pallidum cannot be cultured in the laboratory, but can be identified in lesions using dark-field or fluorescence microscopy or by molecular techniques. Most infected individuals have no symptoms or have transient lesions and therefore a serological test must be used to screen for infection.