Researchers have developed a dongle and an app that can quickly screen for the virus and other sexually transmitted infections like syphilis.

Syphilis brought from the Americas had Europe by the short and curlies in the 1490s, and went on to affect the creativity of writers and artists.

US researchers must have known they were violating ethical standards by infecting Guatemalan prison inmates and mental patients with syphilis.

A cheap, highly portable blood test has proven to be as accurate as expensive hospital-based analyses in detecting infectious diseases.

Experiments in 1940s saw hundreds of Guatemalan prisoners and soldiers deliberately infected to test effects of penicillin.

Teenage pregnancies and syphilis have risen sharply among the generation of American schoolgirls who were urged to avoid sex before marriage

China is suffering its biggest wave of syphilis in more than 50 years as a cocktail of changing sexual mores and weakening healthcare takes its toll.

Uncircumcised men have an eight-fold higher risk of becoming infected with HIV than circumcised men, according to a study.

A study of syphilis among homosexual men in New York City has found high rates of HIV infection, unprotected sex and recreational drug use.

If a country lives by its myths, then the myth of post-apartheid South Africa must be that it had become "the rainbow nation".