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Diagnostic Tests for Syphilis Continue to Perplex Even the Experts
Diagnostic Tests for Syphilis Continue to Perplex Even the Experts: An Unanswerable Question in Infectious Diseases - HIV and ID Observations: Here’s a tricky clinical scenario: An elderly person with cognitive decline or some other non-specific neurologic symptom sees a clinician. Clinician sends a syphilis screen with a T. pallidum enzyme immunoassay (TP-EIA), which returns positive. Lab runs a confirmatory test — a T. pallidum particle agglutination test (TP-PA), or similar, which also returns positive. The lab then runs a rapid plasma reagin (RPR) test, which returns negative. There is no known prior clinical or lab history of syphilis exposure, diagnosis, or treatment.
Now what are we supposed to do?
Source: blogs.jwatch.org
syphilis returns lab perplex pallidum test runs clinician
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