PENICILLIN THERAPY OF YAWS AND SEROLOGIC RESULTS

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Abstract
SOON after Mahoney, Arnold and Harris1 demonstrated the efficacy of penicillin therapy in early syphilis, reports appeared in the literature attesting to a similar beneficial role in the treatment of yaws. The earlier publications2 (table 1) indicated rapid clinical cure with relatively small doses of penicillin, but only a few patients attained seronegativity with the tests employed. In a preliminary report2g published by us, the short term results of treatment of 500 patients with early yaws infections in Haiti were discussed. Penicillin was observed to hold definite promise as a therapeutic agent, but the serologic response at the end of three and six month intervals was surprisingly disappointing. The present report deals in detail with evaluation of the serologic results obtained in the entire group treated at the end of twelve months' observations. METHOD Five hundred patients with primary and secondary yaws were selected for this study