The prevalence of syphilis in pregnant women in Akwa Ibom State, Southern Nigeria

Abstract

First, on employing serology, the authors found that the estimated prevalence of syphilis in a cohort of Nigerian pregnant was 1.98% and the prevalence rates in urban and rural areas were 2.63% and 1.32%, respectively.[1] Owing to the presence of the following limitation, I assume that the study results must be handled with cautions. It is worthy to mention that there are different methods to test for syphilis. Studies have shown that polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique is superior to serology in precisely detecting syphilis.[2,3] I presume that if the authors employed PCR instead of serology in the study methodology, more precise estimate of syphilis seroprevalence among Nigerian pregnant would be obtained.