SynthesisClinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America2020
Sensitivity and Specificity of Treponemal-specific Tests for the Diagnosis of Syphilis.
Synthesis in Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 95 citations in OpenAlex.
- Reinfection caused by gestational syphilis: A case report and systematic review of the literatureRevista colombiana de obstetricia y ginecologia · 2025Pooled it
- Performance of the nontreponemal tests and treponemal tests on cerebrospinal fluid for the diagnosis of neurosyphilis: A meta-analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2023Pooled it
- Neurosyphilis in China: A Systematic Review of Cases From 2009-2021.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Pooled it
- Sexually Transmitted Infections Treatment Guidelines, 2021.MMWR. Recommendations and reports : Morbidity and mortality weekly report. Recommendations and reports · 2021Guideline
- A bilobed syphilitic thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm with vertebral erosion and multibranch visceral occlusion.Journal of vascular surgery cases and innovative techniques · 2026Article
- Utilization and Performance of a Rapid Treponemal Antibody Test for Diagnosis of Syphilis in a High-Risk Population at an Urban County Hospital.Sexually transmitted diseases · 2026Article
- Innovations and Challenges in Syphilis Screening and Prevention Among Men Who Have Sex With Men: A Scoping Review.Sexually transmitted diseases · 2026Article
- Comparative performance of the traditional and reverse diagnostic algorithms for syphilis in pregnancy.Pregnancy (Hoboken, N.J.) · 2026Article
- Comparison between treponemal and non-treponemal tests for syphilis detectionBiomedica : revista del Instituto Nacional de Salud · 2025Article
- Clinical development and performance of the First to Know Syphilis Self-Test for over-the-counter usage: aJournal of clinical microbiology · 2025Article
- Advances in Syphilis Diagnostics to Address the 21st-Century Epidemic.Clinical chemistry · 2025Review
- A novel colorimetric immunosensor based on silk cocoon membrane-integrated ELISA for treponemal antibody detection.Microbiology spectrum · 2025Article
- The Proportion ofOpen forum infectious diseases · 2025Article
- Alternative treponemal serology assays for diagnosis and confirmation of syphilis in a diagnostic laboratory: a retrospective evaluation of four agglutination assays and one ELISA.Journal of clinical microbiology · 2025Article
- Assessing the efficiency and effectiveness of community-based voluntary counseling and testing for HIV in Turin: insights from the fast-track cities initiative - a cross-sectional study.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Diagnostic Properties of Different Serological Methods for Syphilis Testing in Brazil.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Tp40: a new potential prognostic and diagnostic marker for syphilis.Microbiology spectrum · 2025Article
- Accuracy of capillary blood sampling for diagnosing syphilis infection.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Evaluation of MAGLUMI syphilis test for accurate detection of syphilis antibodies in blood donors and suspected syphilis cases.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2025Article
- Latent class analysis and machine learning for clinical subtyping prediction and differentiation in suspected neurosyphilis patients.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We conducted a systematic review of relevant syphilis diagnostic literature to address the question, "What is the sensitivity and specificity of the treponemal tests currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the diagnosis of syphilis (by stage)?" There were 16 treponemal assays evaluated: 13 immunoassays and 3 manual assays (fluorescent treponemal antibody absorbed test [FTA-ABS], microhemagglutination assay for Treponema pallidum antibodies [MHA-TP], Treponema pallidum particle agglutination assay [TP-PA]). MHA-TP and FTA-ABS were less sensitive in primary and secondary syphilis than TP-PA; TP-PA is the most specific manual treponemal assay. There is insufficient evidence to recommend one particular treponemal immunoassay (eg, enzyme immunoassays, chemiluminescence immunoassays, microbead immunoassays) over another based on published performance data. For diagnosis of neurosyphilis, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) TP-PA has similar performance to CSF FTA-ABS in studies with patients with definitive or presumptive neurosyphilis. However, CSF treponemal testing has limitations in its sensitivity and specificity and should be interpreted within the context of the clinical scenario, additional CSF test results and syphilis prevalence.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.