Persons with syphilis must notify their sex partners so they can receive treatment, too. Penicillin treatment will kill the syphilis bacteria and prevent further damage, but it will not repair any damage already done. Also, having had syphilis does not protect a person from getting it again. Syphilis rates tend to go up and down. In the United States, new cases of syphilis are now at their lowest rate in 40 years.
More cases likely occur each year than are reported to health officials.
It can be. Syphilis rates increase and decrease in the United States depending on the intensity of prevention programs and on changes in sexual risk-taking and drug use. A rapid rise in cases in the late 1980s was due to changing sexual habits caused by widespread use of drugs such as crack cocaine. Current high rates in some parts of the country result from the combined effect of poverty, drug use, and lax efforts to control STDs. Two persons who know they are not infected and who have no other sex partners besides each other cannot get syphilis.