| Popis: |
Syphilis has been a controversial disease since it was first recognized in Europe in the late fifteenth century. Historians debate its origins; physicians, its manifestations; epidemiologists, methods for its control; microbiologists, the metabolism and structure of its etiological agent, Treponema pallidum; and immunologists, the comparative roles of humoral and cellular immunity in protection against or the pathogenesis of this disease. As a result, the volume of writing on syphilis is enormous. That reviewed in this chapter deals primarily with the biology and immunology of T. pallidum published since the monograph by Turner and Hollander (1957) and the bibliographical review by Willcox and Guthe (1966). A recent symposium on the biology of parasitic spirochetes (Johnson, 1976) describes many of the recent advances in the immunobiology of syphilis. |
