[The chameleon of psychiatry - psychiatric manifestations of neurosyphilis]

Objective: Recent epidemiological data have shown a significant increase in the prevalence of syphilis. If left untreated, up to 30 % of patients may develop tertiary syphilis, which can manifest as neurosyphilis. The aim of our review is to evaluate psychiatric manifestations of neurosyphilis according to ICD-10.

Methods: A systematic electronic search for published studies (1995-2010) was performed using the databases Medline, Embase, Cochrane as well as the search engines Scopus and Google Scholar.

Results: 113 studies were used for detailed analysis. Clinical manifestations of various forms of neurosyphilis are protean, numerous and non-specific and could be on the differential diagnosis for many psychiatric presentations according to ICD-10.

Conclusion: Due to our results, the difficulties in diagnosing syphilis and current epidemiological data, routine screening tests are still mandatory in the psychiatric field. Further, neurosyphilis still has to be considered in the differential diagnosis within the context of psychiatric conditions and diseases.