Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. E-mail: phoebehung mednet. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4. A study of men who have sex with men, transwomen, and female sex workers in Lima, Peru found that lifetime prevalence of syphilis was substantially lower in female sex workers compared with other groups.
The syphilis epidemic continues to cause substantial morbidity worldwide and is worsening despite ongoing control efforts. Syphilis remains an important public health problem among 3 key populations: men who have sex with men MSM , transgender women, and female sex workers.
We conducted a retrospective chart review of patients that received rapid point-of-care treponemal antibody tests from January to July in 4 sexually transmitted infection STI clinics in Lima, Peru. We assessed patient medical records for human immunodeficiency virus HIV infection, history of STIs, as well as sociodemographic and behavioral characteristics. Cross-sectional descriptive analyses were used to determine factors associated with treponemal positivity. We included patient records in our analyses: MSM, 31 transgender women, and female sex workers.
The overall median age of patients was Positivity on the treponemal test was Multivariate Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator logistic regression showed that treponemal positivity was highly associated with HIV coinfection adjusted odds ratio, 5.
A review of the medical records of members of 3 key populations who had recently received a rapid point-of-care treponemal test in Lima, Peru, revealed that lifetime prevalence of syphilis was high among MSM and transgender women, but low among female sex workers.
