Musculoskeletal involvement of syphilis--a forgotten lesson

Abstract

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease with a myriad of presentation and called 'the great impostor' for the variety of the symptoms. As a venereal disease it is transmissible mainly by sexual contact with infectious lesions but can spread by blood contamination. Without treatment it progresses through early and late syphilis. Since the introduction of penicillin its prevalence has strongly dropped but was never eradicated entirely. As the frequency and the progression are largely controlled there are several symptoms which are not common and can be a difficult differential diagnostic problem nowadays. The authors present a case where decades passed between the primary event and the actual hospitalisation with fever of unknown origin and coexistent swollen joint deformities. The patient was not treated entirely from his primary event and later, psoriasis was settled as a diagnosis, which was the cause of neglecting the secondary phase's skin lesions.

Figure 1

Destructive artrosis of the right knee (anteroposterior and lateral projections).

Figure 2

Psoriatic like skin lesions.