Mahoney, J. F.; Arnold, R. C., and Harris, A.: Penicillin Treatment of Early Syphilis: A Preliminary Report , Ven. Dis. Inform. 24: 355 (
(Dec.)
) 1943;.
Statistical Section, Venereal Disease Division, United States Public Health Service: unpublished estimate.
Moore, J. E.: Penicillin in Syphilis , Springfield, Ill., Charles C Thomas, 1947;.
Most of the extensive literature on the subject of this report has been summarized up to late 1946 by Moore,3 and most of the pertinent papers before and since that date have been published or abstracted in the Journal of Venereal Disease Information and the American Journal of Syphilis, Gonorrhea and Venereal Diseases, to which the reader is referred for detailed reports.
Arnold, R. C.; Mahoney, J. F.; Cutler, J. C., and Levitan, S.: Penicillin Therapy in Early Syphilis: III , Ven. Dis. Inform. 28:241 (
(Nov.)
) 1947;
du Vigneaud, V.; Carpenter, F. H.; Holley, R. W.; Livermore, A. H., and Rachele, J. R.: Synthetic Penicillin , Science 104: 431 (
(Nov. 8)
) 1946;.
Romansky, M. J., and Rittman, G. E.: Penicillin Blood Levels for Twenty-Four Hours Following a Single Intramuscular Injection of Calcium Penicillin in Beeswax and Peanut Oil , New England J. Med. 233: 577, 1945;.
Seroresistance has been classified as treatment failure in the data published from the nationwide cooperative National Institute of Health sponsored study, and from the Rapid Treatment Centers of the U. S. Public Health Service, but has not been so classified in the most recent publication of Arnold, Mahoney and their group5. The data from the latter observers are therefore not comparable with those from the National Institute of Health or Rapid Treatment Center groups after the twelfth month of post-treatment observation.
The only exception to this statement is in the material of Arnold. Mahoney and associates, in which a total dose of 3.4 million units of amorphous penicillin given every two hours for eight days provided a retreatment rate (at the end of one year) of 3.5 per cent. The reasons for the discrepancy between these and other data are not clear.
Normal infants born of seropositive mothers may themselves be seropositive at birth and for a few weeks thereafter due to the placental transfer of maternal reagin. Infants should not be treated for syphilis on serologic grounds alone, unless the serologic titer is sustained or rising in successive tests at four to eight weeks after birth.