The sixteen-year trend of syphilis in Turkey: data from blood donors

Abstract

This study was conducted in order to determine the prevalence and trends of antibodies to syphilis among Turkish blood donors (BDs) at the 22 National Blood Transfusion Service, Kizilay, between 1989 and 2004. Among the 6,240,130 BDs, a reactive result was obtained with the rapid plasma reagin test for 6864 donors (0.11%). A serious increasing trend was observed between 1989 and 1992 (41/100.000 versus 92/100.000 cases, P = 0.003, C 95, 33-107), in 1998, the rates were observed to have increased approximately 4.01 times compared with that of 1989 (41/100,000 versus 168/000,000, P = 0.001, Cl 95, 28-183). After 2002, syphilis seropositivity showed a marked decreasing trend (P = 0.002, Cl 95, 36-118). However, as this survey shows, the rate of seropositive donors for syphilis has been greatly reduced but it is believed that a more thorough management strategy is necessary in order to cause a further reduction in Turkey.