Chlamydia is the most commonly reported bacterial sexually transmitted disease (STD) in the United States and a leading cause of infertility in women. It is most prevalent in sexually active younger population less than age twenty-four. In 2015, a total of 1,526,658 chlamydial infections were reported to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fifty states and the District of Columbia. This case count corresponds to a rate of 478.8 cases per 100,000 population (CDC, 2016). A small gram-negative bacterium known as Chlamydia trachomatis is the causative organism. Both men and women are affected and the organism usually infects the epithelial cells of cervix, urethra, salpinges, uterus, nasopharynx, and epididymis.
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Clinical findings
Signs and symptoms: Infected females have signs and symptoms of cervicitis (Ollendorff, 2017), salphingitis, or Pelvic inflammatory disease. Common clinical manifestations in females are,
• Intermenstrual bleeding
• Mucopurulent cervical or vaginal discharge
• Urethral discharge (usually thin and mucoid)
• Mucopurulent rectal discharge (from anal intercourse)
• Cervical motion tenderness
• Dysuria
• Adnexal fullness or tenderness, associated with progression to Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID)
• Lower abdomen tender to palpation.
The urethral or cervical discharge in chlamydial infections is less purulent compared to gonococcal infections. In men, the common findings are rectal discharge (from anal intercourse) or urethral both are, mucopurulent in nature. Most of the times men infected with chlamydia come to clinic with clinical manifestations of prostatitis such as scrotal pain, tenderness, swelling and perineal