Untreated maternal syphilis and adverse outcomes of pregnancy: a systematic review and meta-analysis

To perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of reported estimates of adverse pregnancy outcomes among untreated women with syphilis and women without syphilis.

PubMed, EMBASE and Cochrane Libraries were searched for literature assessing adverse pregnancy outcomes among untreated women with seroreactivity for Treponema pallidum infection and non-seroreactive women. Adverse pregnancy outcomes were fetal loss or stillbirth, neonatal death, prematurity or low birth weight, clinical evidence of syphilis and infant death. Random-effects meta-analyses were used to calculate pooled estimates of adverse pregnancy outcomes and, where appropriate, heterogeneity was explored in group-specific analyses.