Chlamydia

Rosia Kittel WFE Final

Chlamydia

Chlamydia is the most common sexually transmitted infection that is passed on through bacteria in the United States. It is caused by a bacterium known as Chlamydia trachomatis. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “in 2011, 1,412,791 cases of chlamydia were reported […] from 50 states and the District of Columbia but an estimated 2.86 million infections occur annually. A distressing reason that many cases of chlamydia go unreported is that many people are asymptomatic and never go out of their way to be tested. It is also mostly found in younger people, and is in fact contracted three times as much by sexually active persons between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four when compared to those between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-nine. The CDC estimates that one in fifteen sexually active females between fourteen and nineteen have already caught chlamydia. It is three times as common as gonorrhea and almost fifty times as common as syphilis, and it can be contracted in the penis, vagina, cervix, anus, urethra, eyes or even the throat through oral sex with an infected partner.

Chlamydia is often referred to as a "silent" disease because seventy five percent of women who contract it and at close to half men who get the bacterial infection, as per research done by the Office on Women’s Health within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,have no symptoms. When symptoms are shown, they typically appear after one to three weeks of having acquired the infection. Symptoms in women and in men differ quite greatly. In females, symptoms can include abnormal vaginal discharge, burning when passing urine, lower back and abdominal pain, nausea, fevers, pain during intercourse, low fevers, swelling inside the vagina or around the anus, the urge to urinate more than normal, and bleeding between menstrual periods. In men symptoms can be common to those seen in women such as discharge from...