Immunological and immunochemical investigations of patients suffering from general paralysis.

With the introduction of penicillin treatment for early syphilis, the prognosis for this infection has significantly changed, and it is to be expected that late syphilitic manifestations will become increasingly rare. Even if the period of latency so far allowed for the development of late manifestations is at present too short for a final assessment of penicillin treatment, the action of penicillin in preventing late manifestations has been demonstrated by several workers, including Perdrup (1960), who studied 213 patients who had been given penicillin for primary or secondary syphilis 1 to 11 years previously. It is probable, however, that future cases of late syphilis will occur in patients whose primary symptoms have escaped notice and who have not been given penicillin for other diseases. With the prospect of general paralysis becoming increasingly rare we thought it timely to examine patients from a mental hospital (Sct. Hans Hospital) by various serological tests and the newer immunochemical methods. These patients all showed typical symptoms and signs of general paralysis, including Argyll Robertson pupils, and the Central Register for syphilitic patients at the State Serum Institute, Copenhagen, supplied case histories. The Register includes nearly all persons diagnosed as syphilitics since 1920, and also all those who have given positive serological reactions for syphilis, for whatever cause. The Register also gives information on index cards concerning treatment, hospital admissions, etc., but this paper deals only with the present immunological and immunochemical findings in the cases studied.