Dr. Michelle Barron, an infectious disease expert with UCHealth, calls it “the great masquerader.” Early symptoms in adults are often painless, temporary and easy to miss. After that, the disease can lie silent in the body for years until it makes itself known.
And Colorado, like other states across the country, is now dealing with the devastating impacts that can occur when syphilis goes undetected and untreated.
Since 2018, syphilis cases in the state have more than tripled, to 3,266 last year from 1,084 in 2018. Those 2018 numbers were already a significant jump from previous years.
What is especially brutal is that syphilis, a bacterial disease primarily transmitted through sex, can be spread in utero from moms to babies. Colorado saw 50 such cases of congenital syphilis last year, up from seven in 2018.
There have been 25 congenital cases reported this year, putting the state on track to potentially reach 100 cases before year end.
“This is easily treated,” Gov. Jared Polis said at a news conference Thursday, “but it can be very harmful and deadly for babies.”
Of the 25 cases of congenital syphilis so far this year, five resulted in stillbirths or miscarriages and two ended in death shortly after birth.
To combat this rise in syphilis cases among infants, the state Health Department on Thursday issued a public health order requiring medical providers to step up testing for syphilis infections in people who are pregnant.
State law already requires that licensed medical professionals test for syphilis during the first trimester of pregnancy.
The public health order expands that to require testing be offered also during the third trimester and at the time of delivery. It must also be offered when there is a fetal death after 20 weeks of gestation.
“Pregnant people have to be offered the test, they do not have to take it,” Jill Hunsaker Ryan, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said Thursday.
The public health order goes into effect April 25.
