Syphilis is an infectious disease of utmost importance nowadays, which has made a comeback after the appearance of AIDS. The difficulties faced during the definitive diagnosis and detection of syphilis infection, especially among the people in the developing countries, coupled with scarcity of simple sensitive, specific and affordable tests has hindered efforts towards proper control of syphilis in Africa and in Uganda in particular. This study was carried out to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of rapid plasma regain (RPR) tests to provide an understanding and reliance of RPR for effective diagnosis of syphilis in Uganda hospital laboratories. A total of 196 serum samples from the study population (Mulago Hospital inclusive) were selected for this study. The samples tested had all given results when tested using RPR, hence requiring them to be tested for confirmatory using Treponema pallidum haemagglutination (TP.HA) test. The serum samples found reactive or non reactive were tested on TP.HA (confirmatory/gold standard) and reported as final. From the research study results, RPR gave 25 (12.76%) positives and 171 (87.24%) negatives of the 196 serum samples analysed. Of these results and in reference to TP.HA as my standard, 19 (9.69%) were true positive; 161 (82.14%) were true negative; giving a total of 6 (3.1%) false positive sample results and 10 (5.1%) false negative sample results. Analysis of results from RPR gave RPR a sensitivity of 65.5% and specificity of 96.4%. The positive predictive value was 0.76 and negative predictive value of 0.94. The efficiency of the kit was evaluated as 92.0%.
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