Chlamydia is one of the most overlooked sexually transmitted infections (STIs), yet it’s also one of the most prevalent. Although as many as 10 million Americans are exposed to it every year, it’s thought that only 20 percent are ever diagnosed and properly treated. That’s because chlamydia’s trademark symptoms are easily confused with those of other conditions. Most often, the disease causes discharge from the penis or vagina, along with slight pelvic pain.

One reason that chlamydia is often overlooked is because scientists and doctors knew less about the bacterium that causes it, Chlamydia trachomatis, than about other strains. Because the bacterium is not easily grown in a laboratory setting, it wasn’t identified until 1965. What’s more, until the past few decades, diagnosis of the disease required a complicated laboratory test that took as long as a week to complete and was offered at only a few locations.

Today, doctors can screen for chlamydia with a simple culture or smear and treat it with a weeklong course of tetracycline or erythromycin antibiotics. Unfortunately, sometimes physicians mistake the symptoms for those of another STI, gonorrhea, and prescribe an incorrect medication. In women, this allows the bacteria to travel up to the uterus and fallopian tubes. The resulting infection, called pelvic inflammatory disease, may leave the female reproductive tract scarred, affecting a woman’s ability to have children. However, untreated gonorrhea may do exactly the same thing, and a patient who has one of these diseases is at greater risk of contracting the other.

ADDITIONAL FACTS

  1. Some 10 percent of college students have an episode of chlamydia infection.
  2. A chlamydia infection raises a woman’s risk of ectopic pregnancies, and if she’s pregnant when infected, it increases the chance of premature birth and postpartum infection.
  3. After exposure through sex, it takes 1 to 4 weeks for symptoms to appear.