Rising congenital syphilis rates in Canada, 1993–2022
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: The number of cases of confirmed early congenital syphilis has risen steeply in Canada in recent years, particularly since 2018, to the highest number ever recorded since national reporting began in 1993. We analyzed national data on confirmed early congenital syphilis from 1993 to 2022 to describe epidemiologic trends in Canada during this period. Methods: Data from 1993 to 2017 were obtained from routine surveillance conducted through the Canadian Notifiable Disease Surveillance System, and data from 2018 to 2022 were obtained from enhanced surveillance conducted through a federal-provincial-territorial working group. Case counts and rates were computed nationally and by province and territory. Infectious syphilis data from the same time period for females of reproductive age were also analyzed. Results: = 115) occurring in 2022. The highest rates in the country in recent years have been observed in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, and Ontario. Infectious syphilis rates among females of reproductive age have also been rapidly increasing in these provinces. Between 2018 and 2022, the national rate of confirmed early congenital syphilis increased approximately seven-fold and the national rate of infectious syphilis increased approximately two-fold, including an approximately three-and-a-half-fold rate increase among females of reproductive age. Discussion: These numbers represent huge shifts in the epidemiological landscape of syphilis in Canada. The increase in vertical transmission appears to be driven by not only the increasing rate of infectious syphilis among females of reproductive age but also by multiple structural and social determinants of health impacting pregnant individuals.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".