New Jersey statutes mandate that all pregnant women receive a serologic test for syphilis
(STS) during pregnancy or at delivery if no test was done during pregnancy.
Congenital syphilis may be defined provisionally as occurring in every child younger than 12 months of age with one of the following: (1) a reactive nontreponemal serologic test for syphilis confirmed by a reactive treponemal test, (2) a positive dark-field microscopic examination of a nonoral mucous membrane lesion, (3) a positive fluorescent antibody examination for Treponema pallidum from a lesion.
Among those who actually did receive prenatal care, the mean gestational age at which they were first seen was rather late (22 weeks), and 8% of these had no serologic test for syphilis done.
In practice, latent syphilis is classified as EL with evidence that a person acquired infection during the previous 12 months based on 1) a nonreactive serologic test for syphilis
or a fourfold rise in titer from a previous serologic test for syphilis
during the previous 12 months; 2) a history of symptoms consistent with primary or secondary syphilis without a history of treatment in the previous 12 months; or 3) a history of sexual exposure to a partner with confirmed or presumptive primary, secondary, or early latent syphilis and no history of treatment during the previous 12 months.
Analysis of the NHANES 11 data also showed that a positive serologic test for syphilis
was associated with HBV infection in both races (5) and reinforced that HBV infection is also a sexually transmitted disease (11, 12).