Was infectious syphilis being misclassified in remote Australian outbreaks? Evidence that informed modification of the national case definition.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: The national case definition for infectious syphilis applied in this remote Australian outbreak underestimated infectious cases when compared with experienced clinicians' evaluation by up to 76 cases (42%) and was inadequate to monitor the magnitude of a syphilis outbreak in such a setting. This may compromise surveillance and resource allocation decisions, and could reduce the capacity to interrupt transmission and contain an outbreak. A revised national case definition, informed by this analysis, was released by CDNA in July 2015. PMID: 26779729 [PubMed - in process]
Source: Communicable Diseases Intelligence Quarterly Report - Category: Infectious Diseases Tags: Commun Dis Intell Q Rep Source Type: research