Results of Serologic Tests for Syphilis in Non-syphilitic Persons Inoculated with Malaria

Value of the Kahn Test in Africans

“…Most of their patients were inoculated with Plasmodium vivax infections, but some with Plasmodium falciparum, and they noted a tendency for the latter to produce fewer positive results. Burney, Mays, and Iskrant (1942), also working with induced Plasmodium vivax malaria in nonsyphilitic psychotics, came to substantially the same conclusions as Kitchen and his co-workers.…”

False-positive rapid plasma reagin testing in patients with acute Plasmodium vivax malaria: A case control study

“…Between 2 and 4% of European patients in Africa with treated, naturally- acquired Plasmodium falciparum malaria demonstrated reactive non-treponemal tests [8]. In patients without syphilis, 5–23% developed abnormal Wasserman tests (a non-treponemal flocculation assay, similar in principle to the RPR) following experimental infection with Plasmodium malariae , with abnormal Wasserman reactions becoming more common with more prolonged periods of malarious fever [9]. …”

“…The reason for this is not clear, although men outnumbered women in the malaria arm of the study. It is interesting to note that the earlier studies of treponemal tests in patients undergoing malariotherapy during the 1940s [9,23] were conducted in state hospitals and prisons where male patients may have predominated. False-positive non-treponemal tests are more common in women than in men [18,24], however, and our finding here may be coincidental.…”

The Course of the Serologic Tests during Therapeutic Malaria in Patients with Syphilis

“…On the other hand, the development of a false positive serologic test for syphilis during the course of malaria in non-luetics seems to be well established by the recent investigations of Kitchen, Webb, and Kupper,1 and of Burney, Mays, and Iskrant. 2 The earlier literature on this subject has been reviewed by Hazen and his collaborators.3…”