Fernandes LPMR, Oliveira CNT, de Brito BB, Freire de Melo F, Souza CL, Oliveira MV. Prevalence and factors associated with non-adherence to therapy among partners of pregnant women with syphilis in a city of northeastern Brazil. World J Obstet Gynecol 2022; 11(3): 20-32 [DOI: 10.5317/wjog.v11.i3.20]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Fabrício Freire de Melo, PhD, Professor, Instituto Multidisciplinar em Saúde, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Instituto Multidisciplinar em Saúde, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Rua Hormindo Barros, 58, Quadra 17, Lote 58, Vitória da Conquista 45029-094, Bahia, Brazil. freiremeloufba@gmail.com
Research Domain of This Article
Obstetrics & Gynecology
Article-Type of This Article
Observational Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Obstet Gynecol. Jun 29, 2022; 11(3): 20-32 Published online Jun 29, 2022. doi: 10.5317/wjog.v11.i3.20
Prevalence and factors associated with non-adherence to therapy among partners of pregnant women with syphilis in a city of northeastern Brazil
Lilian Pinto Mota Rodrigues Fernandes, Caline Novais Teixeira Oliveira, Breno Bittencourt de Brito, Fabrício Freire de Melo, Cláudio Lima Souza, Márcio Vasconcelos Oliveira
Lilian Pinto Mota Rodrigues Fernandes, Caline Novais Teixeira Oliveira, Breno Bittencourt de Brito, Fabrício Freire de Melo, Cláudio Lima Souza, Márcio Vasconcelos Oliveira, Instituto Multidisciplinar em Saúde, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Vitória da Conquista 45029-094, Bahia, Brazil
Author contributions: All authors equally contributed to this paper with conception and design of the study, literature review and analysis, manuscript drafting, critical revision, and editing, and approval of the final version.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Ethical Committee of Research in Human Beings of the Multidisciplinary institute of Health-Campus Anísio Teixeira from the Federal University of Bahia (IMS-CAT/UFBA) under the protocol number 97664818.3.0000.5556 and committee opinion number 2.995.408.
Informed consent statement: All study participants provided written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors of this manuscript have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Data sharing statement: There is no additional data available.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Fabrício Freire de Melo, PhD, Professor, Instituto Multidisciplinar em Saúde, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Instituto Multidisciplinar em Saúde, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Rua Hormindo Barros, 58, Quadra 17, Lote 58, Vitória da Conquista 45029-094, Bahia, Brazil. freiremeloufba@gmail.com
Received: January 17, 2022 Peer-review started: January 17, 2022 First decision: March 16, 2022 Revised: March 30, 2022 Accepted: June 3, 2022 Article in press: June 3, 2022 Published online: June 29, 2022 Processing time: 162 Days and 11 Hours
Abstract
BACKGROUND
One of the main difficulties faced in the prevention of the vertical transmission of syphilis is the inadequate treatment of pregnant women and their partners. The disease causes serious repercussions in infected newborns.
AIM
To evaluate the prevalence and factors associated with the therapeutic adhesion among partners of pregnant women with syphilis in a county in Northeastern Brazil.
METHODS
This is a descriptive, analytic, quantitative, cross-sectional study that was carried out through interviews with 46 pregnant women diagnosed with syphilis between 2017 and 2018 as well as with their partners. The interviews aimed at collecting data regarding sociodemographic characteristics, obstetric variables and information about syphilis, and partners’ related variables.
RESULTS
Our results showed that 73.91% of the partners did not undergo appropriate treatments, and obtaining negative results in syphilis tests was the main reason for the absence of therapies. The following factors were significantly associated with the lack of treatment among partners: Being a partner that is not the current mate of the pregnant woman, having a level of schooling inferior to 8 years [odds ratio (OR) = 10.28], and the pregnant woman undergoing up to two syphilis tests during the prenatal care (OR = 8.6). The study found a higher odds of absent treatment among partners if the pregnant woman is not white (OR = 13.88) or if the partner has less than 8 years of schooling (OR = 21.00) or has a monthly income of less than half the minimum wage (OR = 13.93).
CONCLUSION
The findings of this study show a high prevalence of partners that are not adequately treated for syphilis, a phenomenon that is strongly associated with socioeconomic factors.
Core Tip: Treating infected pregnant women and their partners is a challenging step in the prevention of syphilis vertical transmission. This study evaluated the prevalence and factors associated with the therapeutic adhesion among partners of pregnant women with syphilis in a county of northeastern Brazil. Here we demonstrated an important lack of treatment among the study partners, which was associated with various socioeconomic factors.
