Origins of Syphilis Still a Mystery, Researchers Say

Syphilis has been infecting people for centuries, and many researchers have tried to pinpoint the part of the world where the bacterium that causes the disease first appeared, before spreading across the globe and becoming the international disease that it is today.

Yet, despite researchers delving into studying the disease - looking at it from the angles of history, politics, paleopathology and molecular chemistry - the origin of syphilis remains an enigma, say researchers who recently reviewed the literature about syphilis.

The main hypotheses about the origin of syphilis revolve around the voyages of Christopher Columbus to the New World. According to the "Columbian" theory, the crews of Columbus brought the disease from America to Europe when they returned home in 1492. Not long afterward, the first recorded epidemic of syphilis happened, during the French invasion of the Italian city of Naples in 1495.

However, critics of the Columbian theory claim that syphilis may have existed in Europe prior to Columbus' return, and the disease simply wasn't distinguished from other conditions such as leprosy until 1495.

Syphilis - a sexually transmitted disease that can damage the heart, brain, eyes and bones, and even cause death if untreated - first appears in the historical record in the 1496 writings of a man named Joseph Grünpeck. But it was the Italian physician and poet Girolamo Fracastoro who first used the term "syphilis" in 1530 in a Latin poem.

Fracastoro said that this "vulgar disease was born in the west of the Atlantic seas, over those unhappy, recently discovered edges," researchers Ismael Maatouk and Roy Moutran wrote in their article, published Oct. 25 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

But before getting its current name, syphilis had many other monikers. In fact, each regional population had several names for the disease, often blaming its enemy of being responsible. The Italians called syphilis the French disease, the Japanese called it the Portuguese disease, the Turkish called it "the French or Christian evil," and the Persians called it the "Turk evil."

U.S. Syphilis Rate Grows for 7th Year in Row For the seventh year in a row, rates of syphilis infection have increased in the United States, driven largely by cases among gay and bisexual men, according to a new federal report.

"CDC's preliminary 2007 data indicate that the rate of primary and secondary syphilis - the earliest and most infectious stages of the disease - increased by 12 percent between 2006 and 2007," Dr. Hillard Weinstock, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of STD Prevention, said during a Wednesday teleconference. Weinstock spoke at the CDC-sponsored 2008 National STD Prevention Conference in Chicago.

The number of reported cases of syphilis increased from 9,756 in 2006 to 11,181 in 2007, Weinstock said. "This is the seventh consecutive annual increase in national syphilis rates," he said.