La lucha contra las enfermedades venéreas

Abstract

In the past, research on veneral disease has contributed new tools to aid in the more efficient control of these diseases, in particular syphilis and gonorrhea. One of these research projects involves the use of causative agent of pinta (Treponema carateum) as an immunizing agent against syphilis, since for some time there has been evidence that patients suffering from pinta are less susceptible to syphilis

United States and Mexican research workers, working in collaboration, recently carried out a research project using 3 healthy chimpanzees and 2 individuals suffering from pinta: the chimpanzees were inoculated with the positive serum of the patients and 35 days later one of the animals showed a darkfield positive lesion; almost a year later all the animals have shown darkfield-positive lesion. It is hoped to challenge them at an early date with T. pallidum to determine their resistance to that organism. This experiment is a promising beginning and shows the benefits of international scientifc collaboration

The shortage of qualified serologists, and of sufficient time to undertake a large number of blood tests to diagnose syphilis (in the United States 38 million such tests were made in 1968) has led to an investigation of the possibility of automating blood tests for that purpose. Trials already made show that the results of automated tests are comparable to those performed by manual ... (AU)