Chlamydia Infection

The Chlamydia are a genus of obligate intracellular bacteria. There are only a few species in this genus and Chlamydia trachomatis is the one which causes sexually transmitted infections in humans. Chlamydia is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the UK and probably worldwide. In developing countries, Chlamydia infection of the eye is the most common cause of preventable blindness. The UK national screening programme has found that 10% of both men and women aged 18 to 25 carry the bacterium, and the Health Protection Agency says that cases of Chlamydia infection have increased by more than 200 per cent in England in the past decade.

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Chlamydia infections of the genital tract frequently show no symptoms at all, particularly in women, and so may go untreated for years. For a long time, chronic infection has been known to harm fertility in infected women, but it has recently been shown that infected men also have decreased fertility. This was demonstrated when a team of doctors from Mexico examined sperm from men infected with Chlamydia who had failed to father a child. Using a microscopic analysis technique, they found the level of DNA fragmentation in their sperm was more than three times higher than in healthy men. The concentration of their sperm, and its ability to swim were also poor, and there were increased levels of defects in sperm shape. The researchers then treated 95 of the infertile men with antibiotics effective against Chlamydia and found the DNA sperm damage improved by an average of 36% after four months. During that period, 13% of the couples became pregnant but after the treatment was finished, 86% achieved a pregnancy.On the BBC website, Dr Allan Pacey, Secretary of the British Fertility Society, is quoted as saying that more needs to be done to target the younger generation.

The message is that we might think of Chlamydia as a disease that damages female fertility, but we need to think again. Chlamydia is getting out of control. We have got to encourage men as well as women to go for screening, but men are more reluctant to do this if they don’t have symptoms. It is the 18 to 25 age group that is of most concern. There should be a page on Facebook you can log onto and sort screening out.

Unlike some of the sexually-transmitted diseases discussed on MicrobiologyBytes (e.g. HIV infection, which is a pretty good reason not to have unprotected sex), Chlamydia infections are easy to treat with a short course of antibiotics - if they can be diagnosed. Because of the unusual intracellular lifestyle of the bacterium, conventional microbiological culture methods are of limited use in detecting the organism. In recent years, techniques involving DNA amplification have become the mainstream diagnostic method.

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Links:

• UK National Chlamydia Screening Programme
• Find your nearest sexual health clinic (UK)
• Chlamydia Fact Sheet from the US Centres for disease Control and Prevention
• Chlamydia pictures at University of Iowa
• Rogue Bacteria Involved In Both Heart Disease And Infertility

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