{"id":11588,"date":"2010-04-15T07:00:19","date_gmt":"2010-04-15T11:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=11588"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:39:08","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:39:08","slug":"understanding-the-bacterium-that-causes-syphilis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/04\/understanding-the-bacterium-that-causes-syphilis\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding the Bacterium that Causes Syphilis"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_11609\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11609\" style=\"width: 196px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/radolf_lg.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11609 img-responsive lazyload\" title=\"Dr. Justin Radolf, a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics and Developmental Biology.\" data-src=\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/radolf_lg-196x300.jpg\" alt=\"&lt;p&gt;Dr. Justin Radolf, a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics and Developmental Biology. Photo by Janine Gelineau&lt;\/p&gt;\" width=\"196\" height=\"300\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/radolf_lg-196x300.jpg 196w, https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/radolf_lg.jpg 327w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 196px) 100vw, 196px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 196px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 196\/300;\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-11609\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dr. Justin Radolf, a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics and Developmental Biology. Photo by Janine Gelineau<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>An article published in this week\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pnas.org\/\"><em> Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em><\/a> goes a long way toward  improving understanding of the bacterium that causes syphilis and may lead to novel therapeutic approaches for the disease.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Syphilis continues to be a major global public health problem,\u201d says <a href=\"http:\/\/grad.uchc.edu\/faculty\/bios\/radolf.html\">Dr. Justin Radolf<\/a>,  a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics and Developmental Biology.  &#8220;In fact, more children in underdeveloped countries are born with syphilis than  with HIV.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infectious disease caused by the  spirochete <em>Treponema pallidum<\/em>. Radolf, along with researchers from Wake Forest  University School of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and  Prevention, evaluated the major protective antioxidant systems of the bacterium.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Research on this organism is challenging because it cannot be cultivated in  vitro, greatly complicating our efforts to understand how the pathogen survives  in people for such long periods of time,&#8221; explains Radolf. &#8220;The work presented  in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pnas.org\/content\/early\/2010\/03\/16\/0910057107.abstract?sid=5dcf27e8-eb5c-47e6-abd1-0ef6fe0ab56e\"> this paper<\/a> is important because only a very few of the normally wide variety  of antioxidant proteins are expressed in these pathogens, suggesting that they  may provide most or all of the oxidant protection afforded to the long-lived  bacteria which persist in a very highly inflammatory environment rife with white  blood cell-generated oxidants.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><input id=\"gwProxy\" type=\"hidden\" \/> <input id=\"jsProxy\" onclick=\"jsCall();\" type=\"hidden\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Health Center study may contribute to eradicating syphilis as a global public health problem.<\/p>\n<p><input id=\"gwProxy\" type=\"hidden\" \/> <input id=\"jsProxy\" onclick=\"jsCall();\" type=\"hidden\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[45],"class_list":["post-11588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 05:28:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11588"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36903,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11588\/revisions\/36903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11588"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=11588"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}