Chlamydia: Simple Screening and Treatment

by Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Anna Lange (not her real name) had no symptoms when she went to a Wake County, N.C., sexually transmitted diseases clinic earlier this year to pick up her birth control pills. But a routine test revealed that the 20-year-old Lange had chlamydia. "She came in and had no complaints," says Peter Leone, M.D., the clinic's medical director, "and then 'boom' — she was diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease."

The sexually transmitted disease chlamydia usually comes with no telltale symptoms, so most people don't even know when they are infected. But left untreated, the so-called "silent epidemic" of chlamydia threatens to cause reproductive damage and infertility in many of the 3 million to 4 million Americans who get it each year. "Chlamydia's consequences can be devastating," says Diane Mitchell, M.D., an obstetrician-gynecologist and medical reviewer with the Food and Drug Administration.

Routine chlamydia screening and early, effective treatment are the keys to reducing chlamydia's toll, according to Penny Hitchcock, chief of the National Institutes of Health's sexually transmitted disease branch. Two recent medical advances, she says, constitute "very important breakthroughs" in controlling the rampant disease: a new drug treatment recently approved by FDA to cure chlamydia in a single oral dose, and a urine-based screening test that, unlike other tests, does not require a swab sample of cells from the genital area.

Price of Sex

Caused by the Chlamydia trachomatis bacteria and transmitted during vaginal, oral or anal sexual contact with an infected partner, chlamydia is the most reported bacterial infection in the United States and the most common bacterial (and thus curable) sexually transmitted disease by far, ahead of gonorrhea and syphilis.

A person can become infected at any age, but "it's adolescents that we're most worried about," Hitchcock says. "Far and away, the age group most affected are the 15- to 19-year-olds. If you're sexually active and you're in that age group, you're at risk." Studies show that young adults in Lange's age group, 20 to 24, are the second most affected group.

While wearing a condom may help reduce the risk of chlamydia, anyone who is sexually active can get the disease.

Symptoms of chlamydia, when they occur, usually appear within one to three weeks of exposure. In women, signs can include unusual vaginal discharge or bleeding, burning during urination, or lower abdominal pain. Men, like women, may have pain during urination, or they may notice a burning and itching around or discharge from the penis or pain and swelling in the testicles.

More often, though, chlamydia lives up to its reputation for silence. Experts estimate that up to 75 percent of women and 50 percent of men with chlamydia have no symptoms or symptoms so mild that they don't seek medical attention.

Chlamydia is "a very insidious disease," says Hitchcock. "Because it rarely causes symptoms, people don't know they're infected. So they don't get treated, and they infect their partners, who also don't get treated."

Without treatment, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates, chlamydia can lead in up to 40 percent of cases to pelvic inflammatory disease, a serious infection of the woman's fallopian tubes that can also damage the ovaries and uterus. Also, women infected with chlamydia may have three to five times the risk of getting infected with HIV if exposed, according to CDC.

It's not known whether chlamydia infection causes fertility problems or other long-term consequences in men. "We are worried — though we don't have a lot of evidence — that chlamydia infection could cause chronic problems in men," Hitchcock says. "But as far as we know, the biggest price is paid by young women."

Babies sometimes pay a price, as well. Babies who are exposed to chlamydia in the birth canal during delivery can be born with pneumonia or an eye infection called conjunctivitis, both of which can be dangerous unless treated early with antibiotics.

Simple Screening and Treatment

Because so many people are at risk for chlamydia and because the disease can ravage a woman's reproductive system without so much as a symptom, experts recommend regular, widespread screening to detect the disease.

Traditional methods of screening require a health professional to collect a swab sample of genital secretions. For women this type of test "minutely prolongs" a pap smear, FDA's Mitchell explains. "At worst, it can feel like a tiny menstrual cramp, but most women don't experience any discomfort." Male samples are obtained by inserting a swab into the end of the penis.

In the past, the sample had to be "cultured" in a laboratory to look for C. trachomatis, and it could take three days or more for results to become available. Also, accuracy of results could vary greatly based on the lab staff's level of expertise and experience.

Today, a number of tests are available to supplement or sometimes replace the relatively expensive and slow traditional culture. The three major types of nonculture tests are:

Direct fluorescent antibody test. This oldest alternative to culture uses a scientific method called staining to make chlamydia easier to spot under a microscope. DFA can give quicker results than culture and can be performed on specimens taken from the eye, cervix or penis.

Enzyme immunoassays. This test to detect the presence of the cells of C. trachomatis comes in some forms that allow use in small, unsophisticated laboratories that don't have special lab equipment. Because testing can be done where the specimen is collected, results are more rapid than with culture, access to testing is increased, and costs can be lower.

Tests to detect the genes of C. trachomatis in urine, as well as genital, samples. Developed and approved in the last few years, these tests can accurately identify even very small numbers of genes in a specimen. These tests can be expensive, but are becoming more popular among public and other labs because of their accuracy and the relative ease of collecting urine samples. "Now we can screen women and men who don't think they are ill without doing an invasive sampling, so people are much more likely to participate in screening programs," Hitchcock says.

No one screening method is best, Leone says. "It's a tradeoff. We're constantly balancing what is the cheapest test with what is the most sensitive, what is easiest to get from the patient versus what will pick up the most infections."

At Leone's clinic, Lange was tested using the enzyme immunoassay method. She doubted the results at first, Leone says. "We explained to her that yes, the test was accurate, and she really needed to be treated even though she had no symptoms."

Lange and her boyfriend both took the antibiotic azithromycin (Zithromax), a prescription drug approved by FDA in 1997 to cure chlamydia in one dose. "It's a breakthrough because we can observe therapy rather than depending on people to adhere to a more complicated regimen," Hitchcock says. Doxycycline (sold under several brand names), the other antibiotic approved and commonly used to treat chlamydia, is generally taken twice a day for seven days.

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