Jornal de Técnicas Imunológicas e Doenças Infecciosas

Secondary Syphilis Mimicking Leprosy Type1 Reaction

Cassio Porto Ferreira, Vinicius Medeiros, Raquel Cristina Maia, Anna Maria Sales and Jose Augusto Da Costa Nery

Secondary Syphilis Mimicking Leprosy Type1 Reaction

Syphilis and leprosy have cutaneous manifestations with great lesional polymorphism with subsequent difficult differential diagnosis. Both have additional tests that, in certain situations, are inconclusive, making it difficult to confirm the clinical diagnosis. In medical literature there are several clinical cases reported in which patients with syphilis were erroneously diagnosed and treated as having leprosy. Physicians need to maintain a high index of suspicion for the diagnosis of syphilis.