Surveillance study of Treponema pallidum harbouring tetracycline resistance mutations in patients with syphilis

摘要

Doxycycline is a recommended alternative in the treatment of patients with syphilis who are allergic to or intolerant of benzathine penicillin G. Stamm et al. [1] hypothesised that treatment failure of syphilis with doxycycline owing to tetracycline-resistant Treponema pallidum may be caused by similar resistance mechanisms observed in other bacteria. For example, recent studies [2,3] have shown that tetracycline resistance, which confers crossresistance to doxycycline, is associated with point mutations involving nucleotides [nt] 965–967 or 1058 in the 16s rRNA gene of Helicobacter pylori and Escherichia coli. In this surveillance study, we aimed to identify the resistance mutations (nt 965–967 and 1058) in the 16s rRNA gene of T. pallidum in Taiwan.