The Male Health Center

Chlamydia

Chlamydia is a bacterial infection that frequently can go on for a long time without producing symptoms. As many as four million Americans may contract it by contact with infected mucous membranes. When symptoms are present, they include a clear discharge, painful urination and abdominal pain. Treatment is with antibiotics taken several times a day for at least a week. All sexual partners should be treated to prevent re infection.

Chlamydia cannot be taken lightly. Even though the symptoms may be very mild, it could result in infertility. It can also cause an ectopic pregnancy (where the pregnancy occurs outside the uterus), which can be fatal. Chlamydia may also result in infertility in the male.

What You Don't Know Can Hurt Her
OK guys, it's quiz time. What sexually transmitted disease (STD) usually has no immediate symptoms—especially in men? Need another hint? What STD can prevent you from becoming a dad?

If you guessed chlamydia, you are among the few in the know. Unfortunately, a whole lot more will eventually find out. The Centers for Disease Control estimate that 4 million people become infected with chlamydia each year. Most of them have no immediate symptoms and may not even know they have been infected.

When chlamydia does produce symptoms, it's easy to mistake them for those caused by other problems. Women typically have discharge and burning when urinating, easily mistaken for a vaginal infection. The same symptoms in men can easily be mistaken for (and mistreated as) gonorrhea.

Chlamydia can cause infertility in men, but it more commonly affects women, although the damage usually doesn't become obvious for quite some time. Left untreated, the bacteria migrate up her reproductive tract, causing pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). Approximately half of the 1 million cases of PID each year are caused by chlamydia.

Once the bacteria reach a woman's Fallopian tubes, they are likely to scar the walls, preventing eggs from getting through. Female infertility (the cause in 60 percent of cases) is often the result of scarred Fallopian tubes, and chlamydia is the most common cause of such damage.

But the problems don't necessarily end with simple infertility. If an egg sticks in a Fallopian tube and becomes fertilized, a dangerous condition called ectopic pregnancy can develop. Emergency surgery and an end to child bearing often result.

Few women are routinely tested for chlamydia, even though economical and noninvasive tests have recently been developed. If you're involved with someone who could be at risk, urge her to see her gynecologist and be tested. If she tests positive, both of you need to be treated.

Likewise, if either of you has been treated for gonorrhea, it's a good idea to be treated for chlamydia as well. Besides the possibility of misdiagnosis, 10 to 20 percent of men and 20 to 40 percent of women who contract gonorrhea also have chlamydia. The treatments are not the same.

Fortunately, the treatment for chlamydia is simple, easy, and effective. Most people are now successfully treated with a single dose of an antibiotic called azithromycin.

Of course, most of this would be unnecessary if people took the simple precautions that help prevent all STDs. A combination of abstinence, monogamy, and condoms could end the epidemic.

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