Prevalence of antenatal syphilis remains positively associated with HIV in South African districts

Previous analyses from South Africa have found that the ecological association between the prevalence of HIV and syphilis switched from positive to negative in the wake of the HIV pandemic. This was attributed to the impact of HIV mortality on sexual network connectivity. We conducted an ecological analysis of HIV prevalence and syphilis seropositivity among all districts in South Africa in 2010 and 2022.

We used Spearman's correlation to compare the weighted prevalence of HIV and syphilis per district using South Africa's 2022 Antenatal HIV Sentinel Survey. We calculated the change in the weighted syphilis and HIV prevalence per district between 2010 and 2022.

The district-level antenatal prevalence of HIV in 2022 was positively correlated with the prevalence of syphilis (Rho=0.42; p=0.0018). A comparison of the same scatter plot from 2010 revealed that the six districts with the highest HIV prevalence in 2010 had large increases in syphilis prevalence from 2010 (median 0.1%, IQR 0.0%-0.4%) to 2022 (median 5.2%, IQR 4.2-5.8%).

The positive association between HIV and syphilis prevalence is compatible with an increase in sexual network connectivity in the districts with the largest increases in syphilis prevalence.