How can you protect yourself and others from syphilis?

Condoms and femidoms (condoms for women) can stop the spread of STIs like syphilis during sex. When skin rubs on skin, like when the penis enters the vagina or anus, bacteria can be passed on through small tears in the skin. Condoms and femidoms create a barrier, preventing infection in that way. But there may also be tiny tears and small wounds in areas of skin that are not covered by a condom or femidom. If syphilis sores develop in those areas, sexual partners can easily become infected too. These sores can also develop in or around the mouth. So it's advisable to use condoms and special thin sheets (known as dental dams) during oral sex. It is possible to become infected through intense kissing, too.

If you want to share sex toys like dildos, it’s a good idea to put a condom on them, using a new condom each time someone else uses the toy.

Generally speaking, it's best to get tested if you develop typical syphilis symptoms like a painless bump on the penis, vagina, anus or mouth.

But it's sometimes also a good idea to get tested even if you don’t have any symptoms: People who have various different sexual partners and don’t use condoms are more likely to catch STIs like syphilis. People who inject drugs are also advised to get tested even if they don’t have any symptoms. Getting tested regularly (roughly every three months) makes sure that infections don’t go unnoticed and untreated for a long time. Early diagnosis and treatment also protects your sexual partners.

You can find out where to get tested, and what it involves, here: “When and where can you get tested for syphilis?”

If you’re diagnosed with syphilis, there are two main things you need to do: Stop having sex, so you can’t infect anyone. And start treatment with antibiotics soon. The treatment is usually successful: A long-acting penicillin injection is often all it takes. That is followed by a check-up after four weeks to see if the treatment has worked. If it has, it's usually okay to have sex again. But if you still have symptoms and aren't sure whether the treatment worked, it's better to wait until after your next check-up before having sex again.

There’s no need to disinfect household items or surfaces. You can also carry on doing things like shaking hands, hugging and cuddling – as long as you don't touch the infected person’s sores.

Talking about STIs can be unpleasant or distressing. But it’s still important to tell anyone you might have infected about your infection. You should at least contact everyone you had sex with in the three months before you were diagnosed with syphilis. If certain symptoms (like warts in the genital area) suggest that you were infected longer ago, you should contact all the sexual partners you had in the last twelve months. Once they know, they can get themselves tested and, if necessary, treated too. Otherwise, you might end up passing the infection back and forth.

If a pregnant woman has syphilis, she might pass it on to her unborn baby. That often leads to a miscarriage, or the newborn baby may develop the disease in the first few months of their life. To prevent that from happening, every pregnant woman is offered a syphilis test as part of standard prenatal care. Experts recommend getting tested early in pregnancy. If the test result is positive, the infection can be treated immediately with antibiotics. In Germany, the fact that you had a syphilis test is noted in your maternity record booklet (“Mutterpass”), but the result is not noted there.