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Prevention of incubating syphilis

Dear Doctors,

just a short question: After a relatively brief (1 min) insertive unprotected oral experience with unknown, promiscuous woman in the US, I started a 7 day course of doxyline (2 x 100mg daily) just about 1,5 hour after the experience (200 mg loading dose as first dose). Would this prophylactic intervention also prevent incubating syphilis? If not, how long would I need to get a reliable test answer on a modern IgG/IgM syphilis test after termination of doxy treatment?
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300980 tn?1194929400
MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL
Seven days of doxycycline therapy has been proven to prevent development of syphilis in persons known to be exposed to the infection.  In your case, you do not know that you were exposed and in the U.S. your risk that your partner had syphilis, "promiscuous" (a judgmental word) or not is very, very low.  Had you been exposed, the doxy would have prevented development of syphilis. There is no medical need to testing following "preventative" therapy of this sort.  If you feel you must, at present no expert would recommend IgM testing and testing performed more than 3-4 weeks following completion of doxy would be definitive.  EWH
Helpful - 1
300980 tn?1194929400
MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL
Glad to help and thanks for your reply.  EWH
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Avatar universal
...I totally agree with you that "promiscous" is overly judgemental, If applied at all in such a situation, it should also include myself!
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