Temporal trend and characterization of gestational syphilis cases in the state of Alagoas, Brazil

Abstract

Syphilis is a systemic infectious disease of bacterial nature whose etiologic agent is Treponema pallidum, being one of the major diseases that constitute the group of sexually transmitted infections – STIs, which affects one million pregnant women a year worldwide, inducing more than 300 thousand fetal and neonatal deaths. In the case of gestational syphilis (SG), the high frequency of outcomes has serious consequences for pregnancy and for the child. Therefore, this study sought to analyze the temporal trend of syphilis cases in pregnant women and to characterize the epidemiological profile of these women in the state of Alagoas, in the period between the years 2009 to 2018, through analyzes of the maternal sociodemographic variables obtained through National Notifiable Diseases System (SINAN) and time series trend related to SG cases. The results demonstrate that, in parallel to what happens in a large part of Brazil, in Alagoas, the number of reported cases of syphilis in pregnant women has been constantly increasing in recent years.