THE EFFECT OF TREATMENT ON THE WASSERMANN 



REACTION IN YAWS 



By Ernest W. Goodpasture and Walfrido de Leon 



Of the Department of Pathology and Bacteriology, College of Medicine and 



Surgery, University of " 



At the yaws clinic established in Paranaque, near Manila, the 

 Wassermann reaction was performed with sera, obtained before 

 treatment, from 45 patients presenting active cutaneous lesions 

 of this disease. Complete fixation of complement occurred in 

 each instance, or in 100 per cent. 



This result is in accord with the experience of many previous 

 workers. Baermann and Wetter (l) tested the serum of 38 un- 

 treated cases of yaws rich in lesions and found 100 per cent 

 positive. Schuffner(7) also reported 100 per cent positive in 

 38 similar cases. 



Recently Moss and Bigelow(6) recorded briefly the results of 

 the Wassermann test in 91 cases, at Santo Domingo. They 

 found reaction strongly positive in 78 cases, moderately positive 

 in 4, weakly in 1, and negative in 8. The negative results were 

 obtained only in the late secondary and tertiary stages, or in 

 patients who had no active lesions but who gave a history of 

 yaws. These investigators subsequently also found 100 per 

 cent positive reactions in the early stage of the disease. 



From such reports it is evident that one may expect to find in 

 the early eruptive stage of yaws, as in the florid secondary stage 

 of syphilis, (5) a positive Wassermann reaction in 100 per cent 

 of cases ; consequently, the test offers no aid in differential diag- 

 nosis of the two diseases. 



However, the constancy of positive reaction in the early stage 

 of yaws suggests that the test should throw some light on the 

 extent of treatment necessary, as it has done in syphilis. This 

 phase of the subject has received scarcely any attention, although 

 it is obviously of utmost importance, because efforts to eradicate 

 the disease would necessitate treating hundreds of patients in 

 endemic foci usually under field conditions where adequate 

 observation over long periods of time would be next to im- 



