Serological tests for syphilis in healthy rabbits.

Serological tests for syphilis (STS), as well as being important aids in the diagnosis of syphilis in man, are important in the study of experimental syphilis in animals. Rabbits not infected with Treponema pallidum sometimes show reactivity in one or another of the several available serological tests for the disease and, with the exception of the enzootic rabbit-spirochaetosis caused by Treponema cuniculi (Kolmer and Casselman, 1913), the reasons for such reactivity in rabbits have not been determined. Serological testing is one of the more objective means of following the course of experimental animal syphilis, and the rabbit is the most frequently used experimental model in this disease. The reactivity pattern in certain tests is defined here for rabbits that, so far as can be determined, are not infected with treponemes.