“Ocular syphilis in an HIV-infected patient: active disease or immune reconstitution syndrome?”

In patients coinfected with HIV the natural history of syphilis may be altered and the immune defect may account for differences in the host immune response to Treponema pallidum. Anyway many questions remain about interactions between HIV and syphilis during the HAART-related restoration of protective pathogen-specific immune responses. We describe the case of a HIV-positive patient with ocular syphilis who presented an unexpected immune response to coinfection.