The ATLANTA - hundreds of people may have learned that they tested positive for syphilis when they had not really the disease, health authorities say.
A study of five laboratories U.S. shows approximately 18% of the positive results of a method of test used since the 1980s have summer actually negative, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
Experts believed the statistics was much lower - less than 7%.
The CDC recommends that additional tests when this test gives a positive result. But even though most physicians in retest, new research suggests that some people have unnecessarily worried that they have been infected with a sexually transmissible disease sadly famous.
There is also some patients received unnecessary treatment - probably the penicillin, which can have side effects.
Syphilis screening is recommended for all pregnant women and people considered at high risk for sexually transmitted diseases.
But officials of the CDC said it is not clear how widely used the problematic test method is more traditional versus, another.
Test problem, which is less expensive than the alternative, has an advantage: "He don't miss people who are infected," said Dr. Karen Hoover, a CDC epidemiologist who co-author of the study.
But it is not perfect to distinguish in the blood of antibodies to syphilis of other proteins, which means that sometimes gives a result positive for something other than syphilis, said scientists at the CDC.
Only about 14,000 Americans were most contagious forms of syphilis, but the number has increased in recent years. 14 000 Cases are those whose symptoms are confirmed with care, so the conclusion of the new study does not affect this count.
Hoover research is published this week in CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
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Online:
CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr
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