Abstract

5 ml of venous blood was aseptically collected from 112 consenting, apparently healthy students of Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma, Nigeria. The enrollees were 62 males and 50 females (age range, 15 – 44 years). The Rapid Plasma Reagin (RPR) and Immunochromatographic tests (Spodex Diagnostic Company) were used to screen and confirm the presence of syphilitic antibodies in their serum and plasma. Out of the 112 samples, the males had a higher rate of seropositivity (17.74%) than the females (12.0%). The age groups that were mostly affected were 21 – 26 years (21.4%), followed by 27 – 32 years (18.2%) and 15 – 20 years (15.8%). Although the advent of HIV infection has relegated other sexually transmitted diseases to the back ground, results from this study show that syphilis is still prevalent in our community with an overall seropositivity of 15.20%.

Key words: Syphilis, serology, students, Ekpoma, Nigeria