Public Health in Montreal has reported a sharp increase in syphilis cases despite the relatively easy prevention of the disease.

Dr. Christopher Labos spoke to the media about the disease and why it is making a comeback.

When we hear about syphilis, I think of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. That is what comes to mind. But it is still with us a lot.

He said yes, it really is now, the interesting thing is that syphilis cases were decreasing in the latter part of the twentieth century, so starting from the fifties onwards, there was a very real belief that in the late nineties and early 2000s, almost, since the cases were decreasing, we might be able to completely eliminate it, at least from North America.

He pointed out that the past few years have seen a slow return of the disease, along with many other sexually transmitted diseases.

He confirmed: I think this is partly because young people perhaps do not take sexually transmitted diseases as seriously as some of us did, you know, 10 to 20 years ago.

 He confirmed that it is easy to treat through a course of antibiotics. It is penicillin, and that was the turning point.

He added: The reason behind the decline in syphilis cases throughout most of the twentieth century was the invention of penicillin and the fact that you could treat it with a very simple course of antibiotics.

He said there are actually multiple stages of syphilis. When you reach the third or late stage, it affects the nervous system and can cause permanent neurological damage; it can actually be very severe.

 So the early stages may not seem that bad to people, and maybe that is why people no longer take it seriously, but once you suffer permanent neurological damage, you can have a chronic disability for the rest of your life.

 Dr. Labos said that when a pregnant woman gets syphilis and then passes it to the baby, obviously that causes a lot of problems for the child. It can lead to stillbirth or birth defects. This is one of the things that must be routinely tested as part of prenatal care. When you start seeing congenital syphilis cases, it is because people have started falling through the cracks and are not getting the prenatal care they should be receiving.

He pointed out that the primary syphilis sore is actually painless, so if you do not know what it is, if you cannot recognize it, you might not even go to the doctor.

He said when the infection stays in your system for years and then wakes up again much later, you can often suffer the long-term neurological damage I mentioned. So the real risk is that if you cannot get to a good doctor who can perform the proper swab, test it, and get the correct diagnosis, you may not realize you have syphilis, and it can stay in your system for years.