Headaches
Headaches are one of the most common syphilis symptoms. This is puzzling because syphilis is typically transmitted through sexual contact (i.e., when someone with syphilis performs oral or vaginal sex on someone without syphilis). The transmission of syphilis to the brain doesn’t tend to happen very often because it takes a while for syphilis to progress to that point, and it’s not the most direct route to the brain anyway. Nevertheless, the standard protocol in the medical community is that everyone should be tested for syphilis at least once, just in case. Still, if you have a headache, you shouldn’t necessarily assume it’s from syphilis, though you want to rule it out.
Headaches are very common in secondary syphilis, common enough that they are listed as one of the many possible symptoms on Healthline’s website. A headache can be triggered by several things like stress, dehydration, and sleep deprivation, but it can also be caused by syphilis or other conditions affecting the brain and nervous system. Headaches caused by syphilis are commonly characterized as severe headaches with flashes of pain behind one or both eyes combined with fever and chills.
