Introduction:

The syphilis is an infectious and systemic disease caused by the Treponema pallidum bacteria whose main way of transmission is the unprotected sexual intercourse.

Objective:

To characterize prisoner patients with syphilis according to clinical and epidemiological variables.

Methods:

An observational, descriptive and cross-sectional study was carried out from January, 2016 to December, 2020, of 66 men confined in Mar Verde Penitentiary Center in Santiago de Cuba who were diagnosed with syphilis. In statistical data processing, Fisher-Irving's exact test and chi-squared test of independence were applied to evaluate the association between the qualitative variables.

Results:

In the series there was a prevalence of the diagnosis of latent syphilis (100.0 %), as well as the 25 to 34 age group (33.3 %) and the basic secondary school level (77.3 %). Most of the prisoners didn't have history of sexually transmitted diseases (90.0 %), they got infected inside the prison (74.2 %), were multirreoffenders (45.5 %) and didn't enjoy marital relationships (74.2 %).

Conclusions:

In Cuba syphilis is an important health problem in the penitentiary centers as in other countries, where a rigorous control of sexually transmitted diseases could contribute to reduce its incidence.

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