U.S. apologizes for experiment that infected Guatemalans with syphilis

The United States apologized to Guatemala on Friday for a 1940s research program in which Guatemalans were intentionally infected with the sexually transmitted disease syphilis without their knowledge or consent.

Between 1946 and 1948, the agency then known as the U.S. Public Health Service infected Guatemalan sex workers, prison inmates, and mental health patients with syphilis. The program was conducted in order to examine whether penicillin, relatively new at the time, could be used to treat the disease. It was led by John Cutler, the U.S. doctor who later led the infamous Tuskegee experiment, in which African American men in Alabama infected with syphilis were observed without receiving treatment.

Guidelines for treatment of syphilis in patients with HIV have very poor evidence base

Current guidelines for the treatment of syphilis in patients with HIV are based on limited clinical data, investigators show in the online edition of Sexually Transmitted Infections.

Even though their systematic review had broad inclusion criteria, they were only able to identify 23 studies examining the outcomes of HIV-positive patients treated for syphilis. Only two of these studies were rated as “high quality” by the investigators.

Rates of treatment failure varied considerably, and were as high as 31% for latent syphilis. However, the investigators believe that confounding factors rather than the poor efficacy of treatment are the likely explanation for this.

Syphilis claiming Alberta babies

Strategies to stymie a rising tide of syphilis cases that have killed four Alberta babies at birth in the past two years are being reviewed, says a provincial health official.

Alberta's syphilis rate -- 7.4 cases per 100,000 people in 2009 -- is the highest in the nation and has led to the deaths of four babies, three of them in the Edmonton area, said the province's Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Andre Corriveau.

"They were stillborn -- it's one of the complications of the exposure before birth," said Corriveau.