Point-Of-Care Testing for Congenital Syphilis in Mothers and Newborns: A Proof of Concept Study

Given the dramatic rise in syphilis that has been recently reported in the United States in the recent years (between 2000-2017) there is an urgent need for widespread implementation of more frequent prenatal syphilis screening using alternative cost-saving screening approaches. The Syphilis-Health-Check (SHC) point-of-care (POC) test is a well validated POC-test that is already commercially available in the United States, is approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) and Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA)-waived. Hypotheses: a) Point-Of-Care (POC) prenatal syphilis screening late in gestation using a well validated POC-test (in addition to the standard early gestation-screening with lab-based tests) could provide a cost-saving complementary alternative that could benefit patients, mitigate the higher cost associated with the need for more frequent syphilis screening, overcome operational limitations and contribute to the elimination of CS. b) POC-neonatal screening can provide additional complementary safeguard approach to decrease missed/delayed CS diagnoses. POC-neonatal syphilis screening can be used as a rapid screening tool to capture/probe all neonatal cases who would need immediate medical attention and further investigation and workup to rule out (or rule-in accordingly) suspected/probable CS.

Specific Aim 1: Validate the diagnostic accuracy of SHC-POC-test in late gestation (24-28 weeks): a) against standard laboratory based syphilis treponemal tests (TT)/and non-treponemal tests (NTT) in prenatal-care clinic settings and b) also against clinical diagnoses of maternal syphilis requiring treatment during gestation (co-primary endpoint). Specific aim 2: Test the feasibility of POC-prenatal screening (secondary endpoint) and efficacy of POC-prenatal screening to decrease the incidence of CS in a high risk region, through prompt diagnosis (and treatment accordingly) of maternal syphilis cases that need immediate treatment (to prevent mother-to -child transmission) (co-primary endpoint). Specific Aim 3: Evaluate the feasibility of POC-neonatal screening and POC-placental screening and the concordance of the results between late gestation maternal, neonatal and placental POC-test results. (Proof of concept; secondary endpoints).

Study design: (a) Prospective cohort study in the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (SCVMC), San Jose, CA over a 3 yr study period with enrollment of pregnant women at 24-28 weeks (wks) gestational age (GA), presenting for their routine clinic visit at 24-28 wks for their glucose tolerance test (GTT). SCVMC recently introduced as a new standard of care rescreening for syphilis of all pregnant women at 24-28 wks with TT/NTTs, bundled to the venipuncture for the Glucose Tolerance Test (GTT). During this clinic visit, the syphilis POC-testing will be done via a fingerstick in clinic, while the standard lab-based syphilis screening will be done via venipuncture in the lab (as part of the new standard of care). (b) Proof-of-concept prospective cohort substudy to test the feasibility of neonatal POC-testing (whole-blood collected via heel stick, bundled with the routine newborn screening for inborn errors of metabolism at 24-48 hours of life) and placental-POC-testing.