Chlamydia

There are certain sexual behaviors that can pass on an STD. Anal sex carries the highest risk of passing on the disease. Oral sex on a man can pass on a variety of throat infections, including HPV, gonorrhea, and chlamydia. Oral sex on a woman is less likely to cause disease but it can cause herpes and HPV. Receiving oral sex in a man can cause chlamydia and gonorrhea, while receiving oral sex in a woman can cause herpes. Vaginal sex can cause all types of STIs to both men and women. The same is true of insertive anal sex and receptive anal sex. Anilingus can pass on some diseases through the fecal-oral route.

Types of risky sexual behavior include the following:

• Oral sex

• Barebacking, which is sex without a condom

• Sex at a young age

• Having sex with someone who is not monogamous or uses IV drugs

• Having many sexual partners

• Anal sex

• Working in the sex industry

• Using drugs or alcohol

Things that are most linked to risky sexual behaviors are not using condoms regularly, using drugs and alcohol, mental illness, childhood sexual abuse, lack of social support, domestic violence, and recent incarceration.

CHLAMYDIA

Chlamydia is a sexually transmitted infection caused by Chlamydia trachomatis. The biggest problems with transmission are that it does not always lead to symptoms and the development of symptoms can take several weeks after contracting the infection. Women will have burning on urination and vaginal discharge; men will have similar symptoms along with testicular swelling. In women, it can be very severe, leading to pelvic inflammatory disease of the uterus and tubes, which contributes to ectopic

pregnancy and infertility. It is a cause of blindness in developing countries when the eyes get infected.

Chlamydia can get passed through anal, vaginal, or oral sex; it can also be passed to the baby during childbirth. Eye infections can be passed with general contact, infected flies, and contaminated towels or bedding. This is only a human infection. It is one of the more common STIs, affecting about 2 to 4 percent of people throughout the world. It is more commonly seen in young people.

In women, chlamydia can easily infect the cervix with half ultimately getting pelvic inflammatory disease, which means it has infected the uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. The scar tissue is the biggest complication so that women can have pelvic pain, infertility, and ectopic pregnancies. Up to 80 percent of women will have no symptoms. For this reason, young women are screened for the disease as part of routine care or when asking for emergency contraception. Figure 14 shows what PID looks like:

Figure 14.

Men who have chlamydia tend to be more symptomatic than women with half experiencing burning of the urethra. There can also be testicular pain, fever, and urethral discharge, with spread of the infection to the epididymis in some cases. Male infertility is possible as is prostatitis. A few men will have some type of arthritis as a secondary problem.

Chlamydia in the eye leads to conjunctivitis or what’s called trachoma. It can lead to blindness if not treated and can be spread through fomites, coughing, and sneezing. Newborns can get this type of eye infection when passing through the birth canal. Infants can also get pneumonia from chlamydia.

Individuals can be tested for genital chlamydia through tests that amplify the DNA of the organism and detect this molecule rather than doing some type of bacterial culture